Local transporters have denied their involvement in stopping Assam registered vehicles from proceeding towards two popular tourist destinations and said the act committed by the pressure group is not the way to deal with their problem.
It may be mentioned that a group of HNYF members yesterday converged at Umtyngngar and stopped all Assam registered tourist taxis from proceeding towards Sohra and Dawki.
This also comes after the All Khasi Meghalaya Tourist Taxi Association had demanded that Assam tourist taxis be restricted to dropping off visitors to Shillong.
“Our problem is specific. It’s just that we need to have a share of the customers who are visiting our state. The whole flow of tourists is channelising into the Assam based vehicle owners. This has to be corrected,” said one of the transporters.
Yesterday’s incident has spotlighted the issue of local Meghalaya based tourist vehicles drivers and owners not getting any share of the booming tourism industry in the state.
Tourists from Assam come in hired tourist vehicles and back with the large number of local transporters left high and dry with no customers. This has been going on for many years, even though the government has been sounded out to come forward with solutions to this issue, said local transporters spoken to.
Some of them urged the state government to study how Sikkim and Darjeeling have tried to help drivers and vehicle owners from both the tourists originating state and the tourist spot destination states to share the stakes so that the stake-holders in the hills and plains can have a symbiotic relationship.
In Sikkim where similar issues plagued the sector, they said, the state government finally helped them with a solution. The solution is that the vehicles registered in West Bengal bringing tourists from the plains bring them up to Gangtok, the capital. From here for visiting interior spots the tourists are handed over to local transporters who have inner permits. Similarly, this formula is applied in Darjeeling, some drivers said.
Others pointed out that even in Arunachal Pradesh only locally permitted tourist vehicles can take tourists/visitors to special tourist destinations.
Many of them felt that if these issues are studied and solved there would be no problem and there would be no issue for anyone to take advantage of. As it is now, the state tourist transport sector is suffering.
Some said, they had taken loans to buy vehicles to ferry tourists when they saw the sector doing well but had not seen this pitfall for locals. They’re finding it hard to service their loans because of this unforeseen snag in the linkages.
Meghalaya with its hundreds of scenic spots and heritage tourist attractions such as Dawki-Tamabil, Sohra and recently places like Mawlynnong, Asia’s cleanest village among others is climbing up as a must visit place for all kinds of tourists. But adding even more potential to the tourism kitty is the fact that these hills are attracting repeat visitors from Assam, particularly Guwahati and surrounding areas, who make a beeline to the lush hills in the state to beat the unbearable temperature in their home districts.
Some leaders of some state tourism organisations told Highland Post that they are aware of the pain of the local tourist vehicle owners.
“But stopping tourists on the way like they did yesterday is not the way to solve problems”, said one of them.
