International Tourism Day – VP Belmont visits SHTTC-Human development key to achieving excellence |02 October 2004

VP Belmont was speaking after he had visited the Seychelles Hospitality Tourism Training College (SHTTC) last Monday.

Principal secretary for Tourism Eddie Belle and other officials from the ministry accompanied VP Belmont on his first visit to the tourism college. They were welcomed by the college’s principal Brian Hoareau.

Before he toured the campus and talked to staff and students, VP Belmont met with members of the SHTTC board to discuss issues relating to the betterment of the college.

VP Belmont said that the government remained fully committed to realise, in the long term, a new project for the SHTTC. The college should be able to double the present intake of students and be better equipped to train students so that they can enter the world of work.

Regardless of the various prevailing training limitations, VP Belmont said his ministry would continue to do its best to provide students with the highest quality training for capacity building and to develop their skills in delivering quality service.

The industry, he said, provides 7,000 jobs in direct employment alone and the well-being of each and every Seychellois is directly or indirectly linked to this important economic activity.

With the construction of new tourism establishments on Mahe and other islands, over 1,000 new jobs would be created, Minister Belmont said.

Knowledge therefore, he said, has become the fundamental factor underpinning the success of our tourism destinations and as a consequence, "we in Seychelles have recognised that our national prosperity will indeed be determined by the nation’s intellectual capabilities and in our ability to expertly transfer and deploy such to our workforce."

VP Belmont said that the key challenge for tourism education is not to stay with narrow vocationalism simply to satisfy the employment needs of the industry, but more so, it is to harness the development of knowledge that will contribute significantly to the successful development of Seychelles as a whole.

The SHTTC therefore forms an important component of the transformation process to ensure that it is well equipped to cater for the prevailing high demand for hospitality training.

In recognising the need for the school to have more space, the government has,  as a temporary measure, already commissioned the construction of six new classrooms at a cost of R1.3 million to be completed by January 2005.

It is also to be noted that over the past three years, Seychelles has also benefited from a grant of 470,000 euros from the European Union. The money has been used to buy kitchen and laundry equipment, library books. Some of the money has also gone into training and the funding of exchange programmes.

More efforts are needed to expand further in service training and to sharpen the right attitude required in the important economic activity.

In view of the importance of the industry to the national economy, VP Belmont has called on all those in the tourism trade and each and every Seychellois to give their best in acquiring as much knowledge and skills as possible and most importantly to develop the patience to remain committed to its long term development.