Huge tourist arrivals overwhelm staff of Kakum Park
Cape Coast (C/R), Sept. 24,
Ghanadot/GNA – Even though tourist
arrivals at Kakum Park in the Central Region reached 136,000
in 2008, only 12 tour guides are at post at the national
tourist site, an official of the park said on Wednesday.
“We have 74 staff members out of which only 12 of us are
tour guides… the rest are security persons, front desk staff
and other peripheral staff,” Ms Kate Effi Donkoh, a senior
tour guide told a group of international travel writers and
local journalists on a visit to the park.
The visit was part of the on-going United Nations World
Tourism Day, on the theme: “Tourism Celebrating Diversity.”
Kakum Park is a 360 square kilometres state-owned protected
forest reserve, jointly managed by the Wildlife Division of
the Forestry Commission and the Ghana Heritage Conservation
Trust (GHCR), a non-government organisation.
It is famous for being the only tourist site with the only
canopy way in Africa and other features that serve as major
attractions to tourists from all over the world.
According to Ms. Donkoh during the peak seasons, between
March and August, tour guides are overwhelmed with the
number of tourists, saying, there were times one tour guide
was assigned to 120 tourists.
During Wednesday’s visit, one tour guide was assigned to 61
tourists.
“This situation makes it difficult for us to keep a close
eye… to control the tourist and to check them from littering
the park,” she said.
True to her words, even though there were sign posts, which
said “Please do not litter”, the travel writers, numbering
18, who were assigned to Ms. Donkoh, ran into litter during
the tour.
Ms. Donkoh said a maximum of 20 tourists per tour guide was
ideal to ensure that the forest was kept clean and guarantee
the safety of the tourists.
A staff of the Wildlife Division told the Ghana News Agency
(GNA) on condition of anonymity that inadequate staff
numbers was a general problem nationwide.
In 2007 there were 100,000 tourists at Kakum, said Ms.
Ernestina Anim, a director at the park.
She told the travel writers that out of the total number of
visitors to the park, 70 per cent were Ghanaians.
“Of the 70 per cent Ghanaians visitor, 15 per cent are
adults and 55 per cent are children and of the 30 per cent
foreigners, 20 per cent are adults and 10 per cent are
children,” she said.
Ghanaian adults pay GH¢2.5 per head and children GH¢1.5 as
admission fee, while foreign adults are charged GH¢9.00 per
head and children GH¢5.00.
According to Ms. Anim, there were other special charges for
persons wishing to take still or moving pictures in the
park.
She said people taking still pictures were charged GH¢200
and GH¢500 for moving pictures.
Some of the travel writers questioned why they should be
charged so much for wanting to take pictures to promote the
park as a world tourist site.
Revenue generated from the park is distributed between the
Wildlife Division and the GHCR.
The Wildlife Division manages the reserve while GHCR takes
care of some resources like the canopy way and the camp
site.
The visit also took the travel writers to Cape Coast and
Elmina Castle, where the journey through slave dungeons and
the gate of no return, and the narration of the history of
what Africans suffered under slave masters in those castles,
got almost all of them moody and dumb founded.
Some of them admitted to the GNA that they felt guilty for
what their forefathers did to Africans.
One of the travel writers, Mr John Bell, from the UK, said
the castles were clear evidence of what African’s were put
through in the past, saying in Britain “we never learnt the
history of the slave trade in the way we have learnt today”.
He said for British students, the slave trade was
interpreted in a way to remove all emotional attachment,
saying that Africans needed to do a better interpretation of
that period and present the right picture to the world.
Mr. Bell noted that the way so many tourists sites were
crowded in the Central Region, was not good enough for the
benefit of tourism to the entire nation, saying the there
should be a wider spread of tourist sites in order for the
entire country to reap from the benefits.
The writers paid a courtesy call on Ms Ama Benyiwa Doe,
Regional Minister, where Mr Spencer Francis Taylor, Acting
Executive Director of the Regional Development Commission (CEDCOM)
briefed them about the tourist sites and investment
opportunities in the area.
He urged them to write about the sites to attract tourists
and investors to the region.
Mr Taylor said CEDCOM would facilitate and safeguard the
investments of foreign entrepreneurs through its
one-stop-shop investment package.
GNA
