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Tourism minister calls on Gambians to get vaccinated

Mar 2, 2022, 12:19 PM | Article By: Njie Baldeh

Hamat Bah, the minister for Tourism and Culture has called on all Gambians to get the vaccines, saying “we want people to trust our destination.”

Minister Bah made this statement recently at a press conference organised by his ministry to update journalists on the Ministry of Tourism and Culture achievements during the pandemic.

He said The Gambia was the first country in Africa to allow vaccinated passengers to come without a PC certificate, because we believe that it was good to take initiatives to innovate, and to come with policies that would really attract, and that policy has now been copied to everybody. “We are among the five countries in the world, in the African continent to allow people vaccinated without a PC certificate and that has added dividend, and as we speak today, Gambia’s argument has remain firm and a lot of people are now copying it.”

We have gone in trying to bring back tourism as it was not 100 percent prior to covid, but just to brief you what we have done, and the achievements we have attained since we have worked on our recovery programmes in the last couple of months together with our stakeholders and all other government institutions which have been partnering with us.

The Tourism Minister said the Ministry of Tourism and the Gambia Tourism Board will continue to work with it partners towards restoring more confidence in Destination Gambia.

According to Bah, other achievements of the ministry in collaboration with The Gambia Tourism Board have coordinated on several vaccination campaigns and exercises in various locations in the Tourism Development Area (TDA) for employees of the tourism industry in order to boost customer confidence in destination Gambia.

“International Tour Operators, Tourism SMEs paving the way to opening the tourism industry, “and today we are witnessing the arrival of chartered flights for the first time since the start of Covid-19,” he said adding that it’s the first time in the history of The Gambia, “we are witnessing Air France flying to The Gambia now.”