Monrovia – The City of Robertsport in Grand Cape Mount County was a scene of attraction when people from the 15 counties trooped in their numbers to showcase their cultural performance, artifacts, storytelling, mask dancing, and Hut designing in commemoration of the 37th anniversary of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) – World Tourism Day.
Report by J.H. Webster Clayeh – [email protected]
World Tourism Day (WTD) is held annually on 27 September, aimed at fostering awareness among the international community about the importance of tourism and its social, cultural, political and economic value.
The celebration seeks to achieve global priorities outlined in the United Nations’ development goals highlighting the contribution of the tourism sector.
This year’s occasion was held under the team: “Tourism for All and promoting Universal Accessibility”.
At the colorful event, the host county, Grand Cape Mount won the best storytelling, best mask dancing and best hut designing prizes, while Bomi County claimed the best culture performance and Grand Bassa County was awarded the prize for best painting.
Unfortunately, the entire legislative caucus of the host, Grand Cape Mount County was not in attendance. And US Ambassador, Christine Elder, whose name appeared as the guest speaker on the official program sheet failed to show up.
Speaking at the program, Internal Affair Minister Henrique Togba described tourism as the travelling of people from outside their usual environment for pleasure, recreation and other purposes.
He said tourism has enormous economic potential and needs to be measure in order to determine the socio economic impact on the communities.
Minister Togba lauded decision to host the celebrations of this year’s World Tourism Day celebration in Grand Cape County due to the county’s beautiful natural feature.
“If you take a good look [at] our immediate environment you will see that Grand Cape County has some of the most illustrious landscape, nature scenery, wildlife, diverse eco system and unique culture heritage that need to be exploded to our benefit,” he said. “These are driving forces that encourage international visitation from tourists who deserve to learn more of our culture.”
He continued: “As you could observe yesterday, the magnificent displace of each of our County culture performances was something that visitors from other Countries would be glad to see”.
Liberia remains very low in tourism, and the Internal Affair Minister emphasized that the country needs to promote the concept of sustainable tourism in order to encourage visitors to promote the economic sector.
Also speaking on behalf of Liberia’s Minster of Information Culture and tourism, outgoing Deputy Minister Public Affairs, Isaac Jackson said the great scenery of Grand Cape Mount County has something to show to the world.
“We are told that people who do surfing come to Liberia to practice surfing, particularly to Robertsport, because of the kind of nature of the sea here. We been told about that, so we still have a lot to celebrate,” Mr. Jackson said. “In addition to the observant of World Tourism Day, the rotational of celebration provide unique opportunity to highlight the tourism portentous of the various counties of Liberia”.
He added that Liberia’s tourism industry has so much to offer Liberia’s growth and development programs.
“It is estimated that by 2030, 1.8 billion Tourists will be traveling around the world; we cannot allow this opportunity to past us by,” the Deputy MICAT boss said.
He, however, called on all local and international partners to support the Liberian government’s effort in promoting and advancing the country’s tourism industry.