CEO of the Ghana Tourism Authority, Akwasi Agyemang, has announced that tourist sites in the country will now be required to obtain a license before they are allowed to operate. This new requirement is aimed at ensuring that tourist sites meet essential criteria to enhance and improve the safety of visitors.
Mr. Agyemang explained that the legislation governing the licensing of tourist sites was passed in 2020, but authorities granted sites some time to make necessary preparations before its enforcement in the current year.
During an interview with Andy Dosty on Hitz FM’s Daybreak on September 4, 2023, Akwasi Agyemang unveiled the Tourism Authority’s plans to implement the licensing of tourist sites in Ghana before they can commence their operations.
“We came up with a new legislative instrument, 2393, to make sure that all these places can be regulated. In the past, we didn’t have proper regulations for them.
Now you need to get a license to be able to operate a tourist site. And so, for example, whether it’s Boti Falls, whether it’s Kintampo we are going around to now license them.
“You need to have certain basic requirements. You need to have proper management in place. The law says that for every tourist site you need to have the assembly involved, you need to have the traditional authority involved and the tourism authority involved. So that is what we are doing,” he said.
Ghana Tourism Authority CEO indicated that the enforcement of the law on licensing tourist sites will ensure that authorities are complying with the requirements. He elaborated on some of the requirements.
“Unfortunately, it was passed in 2020, just before COVID, so when you pass a new law, you need to give people time to prepare before you start enforcement. Because probably some of them, don’t have washrooms.
“But the requirement is that you need to have a washroom. Some of them don’t have staff at all. Somebody sitting there, you need to recruit, they need to train. So we have started some aggressive stakeholder engagements with all the tourist sites. And we know that in due course we will be able to deal with it,” he said