Chairman of the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA) Renée Coppin has credited the Barbados Employment and Sustainable Transformation (BEST) programme with saving jobs in the tourism industry during a critical period of the COVID-19 pandemic.
She pointed out the employee engagement programme established by the Government “to stimulate the transformation of the tourism and related services sectors and to fundamentally protect employment in the sectors”, in September 2020 during the hiatus in tourism, resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, had in fact helped businesses in the sector to keep their doors open though no business was coming in.
In an interview with the Weekend Nation yesterday, the newly-appointed BHTA head revealed that while $300 million had been pledged to protect the tourism sector “in response to the social and economic impacts of COVID-19”, to date only $48 million had been disbursed to those tourism enterprises which had taken advantage of the programme. (GC)
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