The majestic riverfront of Varanasi and the lanes leading to the historic ghats may undergo a facelift soon under the Clean India Campaign of the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India.
A group of travel and tour operators, hoteliers, NGOs and others led by secretary tourism Parvez Dewan and additional director general, tourism, Usha Sharma made a visit to the city and inspected the ghats on Saturday. After an inspection of the entire stretch of the riverfront through a boat ride, they also held a meeting on the banks of Ganga at Rajendra Prasad Ghat. They were here to explore the avenues of development on public private partnership model.
"Though further discussion and final decisions would be taken in Delhi, the main emphasis of this visit was to identify the ghats and lanes, and hold talks with interested private partners for the adoption of these culturally significant places," Avinash Mishra, deputy director, UP Tourism told TOI. Mishra was accompanying the visiting group. According to him, the development works would be funded by the Government of India while the private partners would look after the maintenance and proper cleaning of the facilities. All the modalities would be chalked out as per the prescribed norms of the campaign.
It may be mentioned here that in 2009, the Ministry of Tourism conducted an independent study to identify major gaps that existed in terms of infrastructure and service delivery at major tourist destinations. According to the report, various infrastructure and service related attributes were categorized based on their perceived level of importance and satisfaction levels.
The key factors that were categorized as low in satisfaction and high in importance included, hygiene and sanitary conditions in and around the destinations, solid waste management, and absence of hygienically maintained public amenities like toilets.
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