Krishna Bahadur Mahara, proprietor of Hotel Devotee; Sanjaya Chaudhary, proprietor of Chaudhary Book Depot and Pramod Pathak, manager of Sathi Auto Sales, have already donated more than Rs 100,000 in the last two months alone. [break]They say they will be donating one per cent of their total income every month for promoting the region as an attractive tourism destination.
The money donated by the trio goes to the Far-west Tourism Development Society. The society, which is chaired by Mahara, aims to spend the donated money to develop physical infrastructures so that more tourists will visit the region in future.
“We believe that our region can´t be developed so long as we rely only on the government,” said Mahara. “Therefore, we decided to do something ourselves for developing our region.” According to Mahara, the society aims to bring two million tourists to the far-western region by 2020.
“Around 300 million people live in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand states of India, which are adjacent to our region,” said Pathak. “By creating tourist-friendly environment, we can easily attract a huge number of Indian tourists to our region every year.”
“Even the Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) has not invested a single penny for tourism development in the far-western region,” said Dinesh Bhandari, former president of Kailali chapter of Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI). “We must come together to develop tourism in our region, which has been simply neglected by the government.”
Bhandari also urged other local residents of the region to follow in the footsteps of the three businessmen. “Our region is rich with many beautiful places,” he said. “A small investment can easily turn the region into the most popular tourism destination.”
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