The tourism sector has been hit hard by the global Covid-19 pandemic and the impacts are still visible in every sector especially where tourism professionals rely on the arrival of tourists on peak seasons. Mountain porters face various obstacles regarding occupational health and environmental hazards. KEEP has always been aware of the need of a tailored education program, that could effectively enable porters to handle confidently and independently any issue they may have encountered in this challenging business. The last year has been particularly difficult.
Having supported the work Kathmandu Environmental Education Project (KEEP) have been doing for a few years now, it was great to be able to offer some support once again.
Srijana Katuwal, Project Officer at KEEP recently sent through a report from the 3 day workshop. So it’s a pleasure to be able to feed back how they got on.
Rasuwa is known as one of the porters’ hub. With families of the tourism professionals dependent on the income generated on the specific seasons, the uncertainty of the tourism industry has created difficulties especially porters and guides. The tourism professionals are bound to be limited in their villages, so in order to utilise this time as a capacity building opportunity for the tourism professionals of Rasuwa who are involved in the Langtang region, Gosaikunda and other trekking regions of Nepal, KEEP conducted this workshop at Parchyang.
The main goal of the workshop was to create educated mountain porters, who after the end of workshop are aware on mountain environment issues, personal health and safety, their legal rights, COVID safety protocols and know-how on being updated and upgraded as well in tourism industry independently.
Through the 3 days the aims being too equip at least 200 trekking porters with practical skills and knowledge required for their job and mainly relevant to Basic First Aid, Personal Safety Skills, Issues of Health and Personal Hygiene, National Parks’ rules and regulations for people involved in tourism.
Along with this, it was to impart awareness and knowledge to those porters about their rights and responsibilities, working conditions, government policies and mountain environmental education.
It was such a delight to hear that the 3 day workshop had been such a great success this year.
“After the completion of the workshop, the participants were expected to have full-fledged knowledge on their working issues, mountain safety, legal actions, procedures in the government and non-government organizations in Nepal and above all dealing with the global pandemic in tourism through application of the COVID safety protocols. It was a proud moment for KEEP to be able to safely conduct capacity building workshops like this one despite the global pandemic. All the participants expressed their sincere gratitude to KEEP and its supporters for conducting this program amidst the pandemic and granting them the opportunity to upgrade their knowledge and skills.”