Carpenters, electricians and interior decorators rushed to put the finishing touches to the newly renovated National Cultural Center Sunday afternoon in preparation for today’s opening of the Asean Tourism Forum.
The tourism forum will launch Cambodia’s “Year of Tourism,” with as many as 1,300 participants expected to visit Phnom Penh for a week of events, meetings and celebrations.
Talks will center around the Asean Tourism Agreement, signed at November’s Asean Summit, and will include panel discussions on how to improve regional tourism.
“The priority issues are security and safety to passengers, transportation and human resources,” among others, Deputy Prime Minister Sar Kheng said in a statement issued Sunday. “The forum will be an exchange discussion on strategies to promote Asean tourism development, sustainably, so that Asean will become a tourism destination of the nature of international market.
“The royal government believes that through this forum, Cambodian tourism will be one of the priority fields to restore the national economy and prospective development,” Sar Kheng said. “Therefore, please, all people, more actively participate, especially for the security and protection of social order.”
Extra police will be deployed to provide security, Municipal Judicial Police Chief Heng Pov said Sunday.
“The first priority is to provide security for members of Asean countries and countries worldwide [who will be] guests for the Asean Tourism Forum,” Heng Pov said.
“We are considering public order and security, and to provide more [police] for traffic jams on the streets in the city, and we’ve ordered all the local police in every district in the city to do a good service for our Phnom Penh residents traveling [in the city],” Phnom Penh Governor Chea Sophara said.
The forum is scheduled to run through Jan 28. Tourism ministers from Asean member nations and other countries are scheduled to meet Friday.
