By Mabinty M. Kamara
The Sierra Leone Tourist Board has in a press release countered an assessment report which it referred to as “misleading” about the country.
The report done by a travel guide blog gives Sierra Leone a 50% score on the safety index, which means that it is neither safe nor too dangerous for visitation. The assessment of part of the publication’s 2020 ranking.
The authors said they analyzed data from public sources such police reports and international polls and ran a unique formula to calculate the risk based on the number of incidents including: mugging, drugs, violent crimes, bribery, property crimes, stolen vehicles, and religion and race tolerance.
The index, according to the report, rank countries from 0-100, 0-33 being the most dangerous, 33-66 somewhat safe/dangerous and 66-100 the safest.
According to the Tourist Board of Sierra Leone, the report had the tendency to negatively affect the effort made by the government to rebrand the country’s image and further undermine the strides made in the tourism sector by discouraging tourist from coming to the country.
“We are appalled that a time when the Ministry of Tourism and its National Tourist Board is making inroads in re-branding the country, such reports are still held up in blogs /websites. Even during the conflicts, the situation was not as bleak as presented on that horrendous assessment. Tourism threat, mugging, scam, attacks on women, bad roads, etc., are some of the worst untruth that one can ascribe to a country that emerged from a war close to two decades ago,” the statement from the Board reads.
It went further to call on the operators of the blog/website to immediately take down the report which it further referred to as “fallacious”. It also urged the authors to do proper research in assessing the tourism climate in the country.
The report rates Somalia 10%, making it the most risky country in the world for tourist attraction; Nigeria is ranked 33%, while The Gambia, known as a tourism hub in West Africa, is ranked 69%.
Copyright © 22/05/20 Politico Online
