Speaker of Lok Sabha, Shri Om Birla addressed the National Conference on Tourist Police Scheme in New Delhi on Wednesday.
Union Minister for Tourism G. Kishan Reddy, MoS Tourism Shripad Yesso Naik also graced the event. Ministry of Tourism in co-ordination with Ministry of Home Affairs and Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) organised this conference.
The report on ‘Tourist Police Scheme’ prepared by BPR&D was deliberated upon and BPR&D also shared the finding and recommendations of the report.
Referring to increasing digitization in the tourism sector, Birla said that in information era, tourists ordinarily get every information related to their travel through mobile.
In this regard, Birla emphasized on developing a mobile application which provides all relevant information related to the tourists to their destinations in multiple languages.
He said that to ensure safe and comfortable travel, this app should provide updated and complete information about hotels, taxis, guides, etc., among other facilities, and facilitate police assistance whenever needed.
Birla stressed on the need for quick police action in cases of crimes against tourists, saying that such steps increase the confidence of tourists and create a good environment. Birla welcomed the establishment of tourism police by several State Governments from the point of view of tourism security and advised all the States and the Central Government to share best practices among themselves.
Regarding giving better security to the tourists, Shri Birla said that it is necessary to give adequate training to the tourist police for effective security and these police personnel should have knowledge of many languages and use of new technology.
Referring to the hosting of the upcoming G20 summit by India, Birla said that the Heads of States, leaders, and officials of the G20 countries will visit major tourist destinations of the country. This event will give us an opportunity to improve security and policing in popular tourist areas.
Birla opined that the country where the law and order is better, tourist inflow improves. Therefore, it is necessary to train the police in this regard. Emphasizing on need for learning languages by tourist police, Birla said that language is a medium to connect us with culture and country and therefore all tourist places should have multilingual tourist helpline facility, which can provide information to tourists in their language. Simultaneously, tourist guides, especially female guides, should be multilingual.
Arvind Singh, Secretary (Tourism), Balaji Srivastava, Director General (BPR&D, MHA), Joint Secretary (Foreigners division, MHA), State Tourism Secretaries of Rajasthan, Kerala, Goa & Meghalaya, DGPs/ IGPs of States/UTs and other senior officials of MHA, MoT, BPR&D were also present during the conference.
