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Move to privatise hotels faces resistance

Photo: Subir Roy

Employees of Hotel Gomti in Lucknow protesting against the privatisation move by the Government on Tuesday.

LUCKNOW: The Uttar Pradesh Government’s move to privatise/disinvest 77 hotels and tourist bungalows owned by the UP State Tourism Development Corporation (UPSTDC) has evoked a sharp reaction from the 650-odd employees of the Corporation, including the daily wagers. They struck work on Tuesday in protest against the proposal.

The employees’ anger is directed more at the move to disinvest the 30 profit-making and viable units, including Hotel Gomti in Lucknow, Hotel Taj Khema in Agra, Hotel Iravat in Allahabad and Hotel Virangana in Jhansi. About 100 employees of the 65-room Hotel Gomti here closed the hotel, forcing the occupants to search for alternative accommodation.

Protest by employees was also reported from Varanasi, Sarnath, Kushinagar, Allahabad, Jhansi, Agra and Bareilly, where the hotels owned by the Corporation remained closed.

At the UPSTDC headquarters in Gomtinagar here, the employees shouted anti-government slogans.

Even as the employees protested against the move, the disinvestments/privatisation proposal was finalised at the meeting of the UPSTDC Board here on Tuesday. When contacted, the Managing Director of UPSTDC and Principal Secretary (Tourism) Sushil Kumar said it had been decided to appoint an adviser for studying the proposal to disinvest the 30 units.

Stating that the employees had misunderstood the whole scenario, the Managing Director denied that the future of the employees was at stake. “The Government is trying to explore the possibility of disinvesting the 30 hotels and it is likely that the adviser may suggest that disinvestments are not required,” Mr. Kumar told The Hindu.

The privatisation proposal pertained to the remaining 47 units of which 38 hotels and motels had been closed down on account of recurring losses. The remaining nine units are located on the Buddhist Circuit in eastern Uttar Pradesh. These 47 units would be privatized on the basis of the public-private partnership (PPP) framework. The tourism official said advertisements have been inserted in the newspapers for appointing a consultant for the 47 hotels and tourist bungalows, proposed to be privatised under the PPP model. August 19 has been fixed as the last date for naming the consultant.

UP Tourism Employees’ Union general secretary Azad Kumar Mishra alleged that privatisation/disinvestments was an alibi to close down the Corporation. He said there was no rationale for disinvesting profit-making units.

Mr. Mishra said the future is bleak for the 650 employees of the Corporation, including those who have been working on a daily wage basis for the past 20 years.

Though some units like Lucknow’s Hotel Gomti showed an operational profit of Rs.38 lakh in the 2007-2008 financial year, several non-viable hotels built at destinations preferred by politicians have added to the financial loss incurred by the Corporation. A hotel built at Bewar in Etawah district when Mulayam Singh was the Chief Minister, one in Shikohabad when Ashok Yadav was the Tourism Minister in the BJP regime of Rajnath Singh, and the three-storeyed structure in Ramgarh Tal in Gorakhpur, the home district of former Chief Minister Bir Bahadur Singh, have turned out to be non-viable units.

The Tourism Minister in the Mayawati regime, Vinod Kumar Singh, has directed the officials to build a tourist hotel in his home district of Sultanpur. About 1055.49 lakh domestic and 13.29 lakh foreign tourists visited Uttar Pradesh in 2006. The number of domestic and foreign tourists in 2007 has been estimated at 1160.86 lakh and 14.61 lakh respectively.

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Move to privatise hotels faces resistance

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