Jakarta (ANTARA) - The government has certified 52 thousand people in the tourism sector through the Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry's Certification of Tourism Human Resources Program, the ministry's Director General of Competency Standardization Titik Lestari stated.

"During the 2022-2023 period, we have certified 52 thousand people in six key tourism areas (KTAs)," she remarked in Jakarta on Thursday.

She noted that the six KTAs were Toba Lake in North Sumatra, Wakatobi in Southeast Sulawesi, Labuan Bajo in East Nusa Tenggara, Lombok in West Nusa Tenggara, Borobudur and Prambanan temples in Central Java and Yogyakarta, and Bromo, Tengger, and Semeru mountains in East Java.

Lestari remarked that the Certification of Tourism Human Resources Program serves as one of the ministry's featured programs and is funded by foreign grants and loans received from the World Bank, with the aim of ensuring sufficient supply of competent tourism talents in Indonesia.

Lestari remarked that total funding of about Rp80 billion (US$5.1 million) collected for the program is being channeled to accelerate recovery and enhancement of productivity of the tourism and creative economy sectors by strengthening the competency of tourism and creative economy actors

By boosting the competency of talents in the tourism and creative sectors, she affirmed that the government is expected to succeed in creating cooperation and business opportunities for people running businesses in the two sectors.

According to Lestari, the ministry initially aimed to certify 45 thousand people but later decided to increase the target since it identified opportunities to certify even more people.

In detail, the Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry gave competency certificates to as many as 27 thousand people in the fields of hotel, restaurant, spa, tour guiding, tourism travel bureau, as well as meeting, incentive, conference, and exhibition (MICE) in 2022.

Meanwhile, a total of 25 thousand tourism human resources have received competency certificates in the same fields this year, with 18 thousand of them having obtained the certificates in early 2023.

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Translator: Sinta A, Tegar Nurfitra
Editor: Azis Kurmala
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