KwaZulu-Natal MEC for Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs, Nomusa Dube-Ncube has encouraged people to visit the province because they’ve implemented stringent protocols to ensure the safety of visitors at all tourist destinations.
Dube-Ncube and MEC for Transport, Community Safety and Liaison Bheki Ntuli inspected the renovation of Margate Airport under the Ray Nkoyeni Local Municipality, on the South Coast.
“We are saying to our visitors come back to your south coast that you love so much. You still have your beautiful south coast waiting for you. The deep sea diving is waiting for you. Diving with the sharks is waiting for you here in the south coast. Well I’ve just experienced the caves here myself. It’s waiting for you,” says Dube-Ncube.
To kick off tourism and heritage month, Dube-Ncube and Ntuli visited a range of caves at KwaXolo, on the South Coast. These caves boast San paintings that are more than 100 000 years old.
Dube-Ncube says they are using this heritage and history to stimulate tourism for the benefit of rural communities. She says their aim is to ensure that KwaZulu-Natal is amongst the top tourist destinations. She says they are working with various sectors of the economy to support the tourism industry to ensure that they get back on their feet.
“We can assure our visitors that it is very safe to travel and it is very safe to visit our facilities. All our tourism and hospitality industry partners have been working very hard during the lockdown. They’ve even renovated the facilities. They’ve actually made sure as well that their facilities meet the highest health standards that are required in terms of the risk management of the infections,” says Dube-Ncube.
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The south coast has been battling with a water crisis for the past year due to aging infrastructure and damage caused by severe floods in the area.
Dube-Ncube says they are focusing on enhancing their destination by improving infrastructure across local municipalities.
“We are working with the municipality in ensuring that we put temporary measures in place as you saw during the pandemic there were a lot of water tankers that were brought in but also there was a lot of water storage tankering that happened. What we also doing over and above that now we are putting a lot of storage facilities so that waterman be stored and then facilities can be able to have water even if there are water shortages. At least there will be water in the storage tanks that could be pumped in the system and then people can then continue to get water in their facilities,” says Dube-Ncube.
Meanwhile, KwaXolo Caves Co-Founder Anele Phehlukwayo says safety of visitors amid the global coronavirus pandemic is of paramount importance.
“With COVID-19, with restrictions that were in place it was hard for us to get people who would be coming here because of the fact that were more worried about the safety. But other than that with Level 2 in place we starting seeing more people coming in. Hopefully now that the place has been opened up and launched well be having more and more people and everything is gonna he rolling smoothly as it’s supposed to be,” says Phehlukwayo.
Dube-Ncube adds that the province is ready to host tourists in the province leading to the festive season.
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