عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Varieties

Saudi Arabia Establishes New Tourism Authority

Saudi Arabia Establishes New Tourism Authority
TT
TT

Saudi Arabia Establishes New Tourism Authority

Saudi Arabia Establishes New Tourism Authority

Local tourism in Saudi Arabia had undergone several stages of development until it turned into an organized sector supported by regulations, projects and programs.

Saudi Arabia had also further polished its image as a tourism destination by the launching of e-visas for tourists. It opened its gates to the world in a way that matches its rich heritage and tourism attractions it has to offer visitors.

Many Saudi towns, cities and historic sites are gaining a competitive edge on local and international levels thanks to the attention they have secured from Kingdom authorities that have made transforming the country into a tourism destination a prevalent trend.

The Saudi Cabinet had approved the establishment of the Saudi Tourism Authority (STA) based on the recommendation of Council of Economic and Development Affairs.

King Salman bin Abdulaziz issued in February 2020 a royal decree to set up a new ministry for tourism, after cancelling the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage (SCTH), and appointed Ahmed Al-Khateeb as head of the ministry.

The Saudi Tourism Authority is tasked with supervising, developing and marketing tourist packages and products both locally and internationally.

Over the last two decades, Saudi Arabia underwent a number of advanced stages in the file of organized tourism. The Asir region, nestled in southern Saudi Arabia, witnessed the formation of the first committee to stimulate tourism back in 1995.

In 2000, the Supreme Commission for Tourism was established. Over the years its name was changed, until a Ministry of Tourism was established in 2020.

The Ministry seeks to raise the contribution of the tourism sector to the Gross domestic product (GDP) from 3% to 10%.

It also focuses on creating an attractive investment environment, providing diverse packages of tourism services and offers, developing tourist destinations and sites, generating one million jobs in the tourism sector, and qualifying human labor working in the sector.

Most Viewed

 
 
Varieties

Children Suffer as Schools Go Online in Polluted Delhi

Confined to her home by the toxic smog choking India's capital, Harshita Gautam attends an online class on a mobile phone - AFP
Confined to her home by the toxic smog choking India's capital, Harshita Gautam attends an online class on a mobile phone - AFP
TT
TT

Children Suffer as Schools Go Online in Polluted Delhi

Confined to her home by the toxic smog choking India's capital, Harshita Gautam attends an online class on a mobile phone - AFP
Confined to her home by the toxic smog choking India's capital, Harshita Gautam attends an online class on a mobile phone - AFP

Confined to her family's ramshackle shanty by the toxic smog choking India's capital, Harshita Gautam strained to hear her teacher's instructions over a cheap mobile phone borrowed from her mother.

The nine-year-old is among nearly two million students in and around New Delhi told to stay home after authorities once again ordered schools to shut because of worsening air pollution.

Now a weary annual ritual, keeping children at home and moving lessons online for days at a time during the peak of the smog crisis in winter ostensibly helps protect the health of the city's youth.

The policy impacts both the education and the broader well-being of schoolkids around the city -- much more so for children from poorer families like Gautam.

"I don't like online classes," she told AFP, sitting on a bed her family all share at night in their spartan one-room home in the city's west.

"I like going to school and playing outside but my mother says there is too much pollution and I must stay inside."

Gautam struggles to follow the day's lesson, with the sound of her teacher's voice periodically halting as the connection drops out on the cheap Android phone.

Her parents both earn paltry incomes -- her polio-stricken father by working at a roadside food stall and her mother as a domestic worker.

Neither can afford to skip work and look after their only child, and they do not have the means to buy air purifiers or take other measures to shield themselves from the smog.

Gautam's confinement at home is an additional financial burden for her parents, who normally rely on a free-meal programme at her government-run school to keep her fed for lunch.

"When they are at school I don't have to worry about their studies or food. At home, they are hardly able to pay any attention," Gautam's mother Maya Devi told AFP.

"Why should our children suffer? They must find some solution."

Delhi and the surrounding metropolitan area, home to more than 30 million people, consistently tops world rankings for air pollution.

The city is blanketed in acrid smog each winter, primarily blamed on agricultural burning by farmers to clear their fields for ploughing, as well as factories and traffic fumes.

Levels of PM2.5 -- dangerous cancer-causing microparticles that enter the bloodstream through the lungs -- surged 60 times past the World Health Organization's recommended daily maximum on Monday.

A study in the Lancet medical journal attributed 1.67 million premature deaths in India to air pollution in 2019.

Piecemeal government initiatives include partial restrictions on fossil fuel-powered transport and water trucks spraying mist to clear particulate matter from the air.

But none have succeeded in making a noticeable impact on a worsening public health crisis.

- 'A lot of disruptions' -

The foul air severely impacts children, with devastating effects on their health and development.

Scientific evidence shows children who breathe polluted air are at higher risk of developing acute respiratory infections, a report from the UN children's agency said in 2022.

A 2021 study published in the medical journal Lung India found nearly one in three school-aged children in the capital were afflicted by asthma and airflow obstruction.

Sunita Bhasin, director of the Swami Sivananda Memorial Institute school, told AFP that pollution-induced school closures had been steadily increasing over the years.

"It's easy for the government to give a blanket call to close the schools but... abrupt closure leads to a lot of disruptions," she said.

Bhasin said many of Delhi's children would anyway continue to breathe the same noxious air whether at school or home.

"There is no space for them in their homes, so they will go out on the streets and play."