Date Posted: 11/14/2012 7:32:16 AM
Posted By: JUS Membership Level: Bronze Total Points: 50
Tourism is among the major foreign currency earners in Kenya. The Kenyan coast is a great tourist attraction centre. Thousands of tourists flock at the coast daily. In the recent, the number of tourists flowing in our country has flopped drastically on Islamist security fears. Mombasa has been undergoing situations of instability and peace violation, thus inducing fear, both in the residents and tourists. For example, the Mombasa Republican Council, which claims that Coast is not part of Kenya, has been creating chaos at the coast. In the first months of this year, the number of tourists has fallen by 22 percent as compared to the previous year, 2011. This is heinous. It is a threat to Kenya's economy.The government has to quickly take this matter into account, lest the number of tourists at the coast succumb to zero. Officials said that the number of tourists arriving at Mombasa has dropped to 121,472 between January and August this year as compared to 156, 521 in the same period last year. This makes a difference of 35,049. Almost 40,000, this is quite a big number. It is a big loss. This fall is a result of the cancellation of some major charter flights to Mombasa. Some of the cancelled charters are; British -operated Monarch Airlines, Air Berlin, France's Corsair and Tuk Uk. SN Brussels from Belgium and Time Airline from South Africa have also withdrawn. The charters were flying in daily and some twice weekly, with an enormous number of tourists in them. High cost of landing in Mombasa has also contributed to the decrease of the number of tourists. Kenya's economy is at the risk of deterioration. The government needs billions of cash to pay the civil servants with the increment of teacher's and doctor's salaries. Where does it expect to fetch these funds from if the state of tourism in the country is not looked into? It is ironical of how Kenya has strived to restore peace in both the Republic of South Sudan and Somalia, yet there is instability in our own country. Peace is one of the major prerequisites of economic development in a state. Thus, peace has to be restored at the coast in order to increase the number of tourists, and hopefully hit the normal number. Can the government do something?
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