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Tomorrow, at 09h00 I will be joined by the MEC for Transport, Community Safety and Liaison Bheki Ntuli and local leadership during the inspection of the renovation of Margate Airport under Ray Nkoyeni Local Municipality on the South Coast.

About R10 million has been injected by the department into this project which has created much needed jobs for the local communities.  

We are committed to modernizing our small airports – not only to allow for an easy flow of passengers and tourists to various corners of this province - but to make our airport attractive destinations for future investments. 

As part of heritage and tourism month activation, we will also visit a range of caves at KwaXolo, South Coast. This is a must-see tourism feature which boast San paintings that are more than 100 000 years old.  This is rich heritage and history we are using to stimulate tourism for the benefit of rural communities.

I must hasten to point out that since the opening up of inter-provincial leisure travel, we are inundated with bookings from tourists from across the country.

Critically, as the department we are working with municipalities across the province to ensure we local communities are brought into the mainstream tourism. The success of tourism will be judged by how much it is contributing towards our efforts aimed at substantially reducing poverty, inequality and unemployment in our country.

More inclusive growth in the tourism sector will assist us enormously in our pledge to address inequality through radical economic transformation. 

To achieve this inclusive growth, we are ensuring that all spheres of government work towards increasing the number of tourism programmes and projects that are led by, and benefit communities. This will lay the foundation for real transformation to take root on the ground.

We are intensifying the roll out the Local Government Tourism Capacity Building Programme for Tourism Practitioners and Communities. Our aim to ensure that KZN is amongst the top tourist destinations.  To achieve this vision, we have focused on enhancing our destination by improving infrastructure at various tourism magnets across local municipalities.

#KZNHASITALL #BELIEVEIT

Issued by The KZN MEC for Economic Development, Tourism And Environmental Affairs, Nomusa Dube-Ncube