UTB to license tour guides

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Uganda Tourism Board (UTB) has embarked on a drive to license tour guides all over the country.

The drive involves offering free hospitality lectures to all tour guides and also meeting stakeholders like tourism police and tourism officers on how best they can enforce professionalism within the industry.

The tour guides will be trained for two weeks and be interviewed to ascertain whether they are fit to operate in the industry.

While addressing journalists after presiding over a stakeholders meeting in Jinja district on Friday, UTB’s classification and registration officer, Angela Nalugo says that most tour guides in the country lack the necessary ethics while practicing their job which is affecting the growth of the tourism industry.

Nalugo stresses that tour guides will be licensed at a free cost and all of them shall be availed with uniforms and registration numbers for easy identification and scrutiny in case they engage in misconduct while on duty.

She adds that all tour guides who operate without acquiring UTB licenses and registration numbers shall be charged with impersonation.

Herbert Byaruhanga, the Vice Chairperson of Uganda Tourism Association says that UTB has presided over training of 6,000 tour guides throughout the different regions of the country and licensing them has been overdue.

Byaruhanga argues that tourism is one of the biggest revenue earners for the country and tour guides are so essential in this industry, adding that, all of them shall be assessed and licensed if they are to operate in 2020.

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