KUCHING: The Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture is still in the process of studying the possibility of allowing overseas tourists from green zones to enter the country.
Minister Datuk Seri Nancy Shukri said the ministry had already identified the countries that had been labelled as green zones.
“However, we need to be realistic. If we see the country as a green zone it may not be practical, this because for instance like Australia, we cannot see the whole country as green zone because Melbourne was just hit with the second wave of Covid-19.
“As such, we are now looking at it as a destination and not from the point of view of a country,” she said in a reply to Ahmad Maslan (Pontian) who had asked whether there were plans for the government to allow entry of tourists from green zones.
She said for instance it would be looked from the perspective of Malaysia and Perth and the decision was currently being studied.
“On this, there must be an agreement between two countries as this is also subject to the other destinations where they must open space to us as well,” she said.
She added the ministry was currently in discussion with the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Foreign Affairs to work out the best solution.
In reply to another question from Ahmad, Nancy said the ministry was continuously promoting domestic tourism.
“We have been going on the ground to promote domestic travel and have only engaged with social media content creators who have been promoting places of attraction in the country.
“We have also asked them to continue promoting the travel destinations within the country,” she said.
In replying to another question from Khoo Poay Tiong (Melaka), Nancy said the ministry had formulated several upskilling and reselling training programmes to help the tourism industry players affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
