Eventually, after locking down for six-months due to pandemic Covid-19, the Government of Nepal decided to permit domestic flights, long route vehicles, hotels, and restaurants to operate from Thursday.
Similarly, travel and trekking agencies are also allowed to run their business from 17 October whose most of the clients are foreigners. On the recommendation of the Covid-19 Crisis Management Committee (CCMC), the decisions were taken by the Cabinet on Monday. The lock-down was eased from 13 September in Kathmandu Valley which allowed shops to be opened for limited times on certain days of the week. Likewise, public transport, taxies, and private vehicles were allowed on odd-even days.
Limited regular international flights were also granted a permit from 1 September. However, the total number of passengers arriving daily should not exceed 800. 3,000 passengers a day might be allowed to land hinted by the Tourism and Civil Aviation Minister Yogesh Bhattarai last week.
Although foreigners are still not got permission to travel to Nepal and RT PCR negative test report done 72 hours before departure is mandatory for the passengers. Nepal’s domestic airlines will be relieved with the decision as most of their planed and helicopters are grounded for the past six months.
The decision allowed to reopen hotels and restaurants after 21 July was put off on 20 August when the Covid-19 case began to incline.On 15 September, 11 more people died due to Covid-19, and the total number of death cases reached to 371. There are 15,779 active cased in Nepal of which 8,139 are symptomatic and are in the isolation wards of the hospitals. Only the good news is that over 40,000 people have been recovered.
Although the travel restrictions are eased, airlines, hotels, and restaurants have to follow the strict protocol of separation and masks, foreign misters Gayawali said at the press meet. At the same time, long-distance buses can carry only half the number of passengers following the protocol strictly.
Hotels in Nepal gained almost no income since March and are forced to lay off a quarter of their staff, with others taking pay cuts. With the target of welcoming 2 million tourists, the Nepalese government was promoting Visit Nepal Year 2020 which was canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In 2018-19, $700 million were generated from the tourism sector which makes up 8% of Nepal’s GDP. The tourism and mountaineering sectors have directly employed have a million Nepalese and the other 2 missions are indirectly benefiting.