Tourism industry seeks subsistence allowance for employees

The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), including leaders from the tourism sector, has requested the Kerala chief minister to provide a subsistence allowance of Rs 9,000 for every employee in the sector. In a virtual conference attended by Pinarayi Vijayan, the tourism industry said the moratorium for loans and interests should be extended for a minimum period of one year.

A soft loan with low interest rate for the industry to meet the costs for a year, electricity to be charged on actual usage basis for the hospitality sector, GST holiday for the tourism industry for a year and road tax discount of 50% till September were some of the other suggestions put forward.

The tourism sector, represented by EM Najeeb, Jose Dominic, Baby Mathew, Narayanan and Saji Kumar, informed the chief minister that 15,000 entrepreneurs have invested Rs 4 lakh crores in tourism, employing 15 lakh employees in Kerala.

The tourism industry will recover fully only by September 2021 as all the markets have been hit, the representatives told the chief minister during the online conference held on Thursday morning.