By Nur Ashikin Louis
KUCHING, Nov 19: Sarawakians have started appreciating local tourism products in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, says Tourism, Arts and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah.
He mentioned that due to the pandemic, it is difficult to get foreign visitors to come to Sarawak and therefore, the ministry will try to push for locals to visit their own ‘backyard’.
“The locals cannot travel outside of Malaysia or they have to undergo some sort of restriction in doing so. That’s where you can see that our local tourism products started being appreciated by our locals visiting other parts of Sarawak. That is also tourism.
“Locals can come to places of interest in Sarawak and spend their money and that in itself helps the tourism industry,” he said during the flagging off ceremony of the 12-day ‘Hidden Gems in Borneo, Sarawak!’ road trip at Sin Chew Daily’s plant in Kuching today.
Additionally, Abdul Karim who is also Youth and Sports Minister-cum-Asajaya incumbent hopes to see an increase in the number of participants for the Sarawak’s Malaysia My Second Home Programme (S-MM2H) with the opening of State borders next year.
While the federal government has introduced stricter criteria for the MM2H programme on Aug 11, 2021, Sarawak still maintains the reforms that it introduced since Sept last year and this might drive the MM2H participants in the Peninsular to come to Sarawak. – DayakDaily
