Telecom alarm for tourism

The telecom strike has brought a lot of difficulty for the tour operators of the region. As the tourists season is about to start, the operators have been getting regular phone calls from prospective visitors. A strike at this juncture has caused a great loss for the business in general.

It has also hit the cellular and the fixed line telephony. Mobile telephone of BSNL and the private operators like Reliance, Hutch and Airtel has been the worst hit. The prepaid users of the BSNL are unable to recharge their voucher and STD calls are also difficult to connect from the land line. Samrat Sanyal, secretary of Eastern Himalayan Travel and Tour Operators` Association said us that tourist season have started and we receive a large number of enquiry from the visitors but we are not able to get back them. Sometimes the tourists are failing to get in touch with us due to the problem of the telecom. `If it continues for a long time then it would be harmful for the tourism industry,` said Mr. Deepak Gupta, the co-coordinator of the association. He added that they are looking for a boom season with a number of visitors surpassing the past record but the going has become tough. Tourism industry faces problems this year, first it was Subhash Ghishing announced a series of bandhs and it was called off by one of their member and quires starts and now the problem of telecommunication. `The communication problems hamper the railway reservation system because due to the link failure we are not able to provide the confirm reservation through the internet to the travelers,` said Mr. D. Bhattacherjee assistant commercial manager of Indian Railways. Biswajit Das, general secretary of Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry in North Bengal, said `This is the end of financial year and time for tax collection and we are unable to contact`.

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