The Deputy Director in the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism's Tourism Department, Elise Hashikutuva, says she is satisfied with input from stakeholders during the validation workshop on the Revised National Policy on Sustainable Tourism Development.

One such validation workshop was held at Oshakati, where participants actively took part to ensure that their inputs are considered.

The Revised National Policy on Sustainable Tourism Development for Namibia aims to provide a comprehensive framework for the strategic mobilization of tourism resources, in alignment with long-term national goals defined in Vision 2030 and the more specific targets of the NDP6.

Hashikutuva explained that they have captured all the inputs during the regional stakeholder consultations, and the new additions, especially on transportation of tourists as well as safety and security, are to be incorporated into the revised Namibia Tourism Policy.

"What we are going to do now is to put together all the comments from different regions that are doing the validation and then have a complete draft policy, and then we follow the procedure and process to finalize the policy."

One of the participants, Simaneka Nendongo, says they are happy with the process and platform that the government has given them to participate in reviewing and formulating a policy that speaks to them.

Nendongo stated that this will assist them in ensuring that those who are in the tourism industry and are interested in investing in the sectors are covered and protected.

"They have addressed a lot of issues, they have addressed all the gaps existing currently in the tourism industry in terms of bottlenecks, in terms of regulation, and also in terms of coordination and collaboration with other stakeholders in the industry. This policy will also be brought into the master plan and strategic plan that the ministry will be using to implement, and on top of that, they have also incorporated the aspect of implementation strategy and the monitoring and evaluation, whereby the ministry will be able to assist the stakeholders and implementers on how tourism can be developed and be taken to another level in the country."