Managing the 90th minute of the Eid al-Fitr holiday!
With less than a week to go until the Eid al-Fitr holiday, the Travel Services Headquarters has just convened a meeting and asked the provinces to be prepared, anticipating another wave of travel. This method of coordination and late planning on Nowruz also surprised many provinces and cities due to the volume of passengers and brought it to the brink of crisis.
According to ISNA, Mustafa Fatemi – Secretary of the Central Staff for Travel Services Coordination – with the possibility of another wave of travel ahead of the Eid al-Fitr holiday, has made recommendations to the authorities and said that the approach to travel management in the holiday is like Nowruz 1401 and from The provinces wanted to be ready.
Fatemi also stressed that the management and planning of safe and responsible trips, supporting affected businesses and creating social vitality and directing travel to safe areas, taking into account the approvals issued by the National Corona Management Headquarters, full compliance with health protocols and providing psychological peace to host communities. Will be responsible for all member devices.
He also called on the provinces to provide committees for transportation services, rescue services, law enforcement, security, urban traffic, coordination of municipalities and rural areas, statistical planning, housing and welfare, market monitoring, evaluation, performance and grievance redress, and health services. Activate health and environment, information, advertising, cultural affairs and cyberspace to manage the Eid al-Fitr holiday.
The Secretary General of the Central Staff for Travel Services Coordination also demanded that the supervision of tourism facilities be intensified with the approach of observing health protocols, and the supervision of recreation and outreach centers be increased, and attention be paid to solving the problems of health services and improving the condition of prayer halls.
All of these recommendations have been made to the 22 staff members, while there is not much time left for management and planning or, as the headquarters emphasizes, solving problems such as health services, and the question arises as to why the central headquarters coordinates travel services despite the possibilities and forecasts. Has the crowds traveled during the long Eid al-Fitr holiday, made arrangements with other members at the last minute, and ordered the provinces to be ready a week before the holiday?
Delays in planning and managing travel during the Nowruz holiday also caused some provinces that were not ready for Nowruz travel and were informed of the lifting of corona restrictions a week before the holiday, to face a crisis in the passenger population and lack of accommodation and food items such as flour and bread. . In some southern cities, people slept in tents in an unsuitable space without facilities and equipment. Some other provinces and cities, using the capacity of mosques and husseiniyahs, announced that they had managed the crisis of Nowruz travel. Of course, this action was criticized and reacted as to why the cities of Persepolis, which are always welcomed by travelers and have predictable conditions for holidays, are still shocked by accommodation during rush hour and face a lack of facilities and poor services. . Although the officials of the headquarters in Tehran had said that they had been holding meetings for Nowruz since November 1400, but in many provinces these meetings had become more serious in the last week of March 1400.
On the other hand, the Travel Services Headquarters believes that by announcing secluded cities, it has succeeded in managing trips on Nowruz and distributing them among low-traffic cities, while this question is raised by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts and the Travel Services Coordination Headquarters. They have access to provinces and cities, why not identify and announce “specific cities” or high-capacity areas before the holidays, and do not use the experience of the private sector and tourism facilities before the holidays to distribute and manage travel, despite the fact that A significant percentage of people use travel tents while traveling, do not introduce suitable and equipped places in advance, and are still unaware of the planning and management of services to this group of travelers, and in times of crisis and lack of accommodation, they face mosques and husseiniyahs. And they call it “travel crisis management”?
The repetition of this method of planning and managing the trip in the 90th minute for the holidays specified in the calendar is questionable, especially when the corona restrictions have been lifted and there is no ban on travel, and the conditions, facilities, capacities, injuries and problems experienced Nowruz has also been predictable and predictable.
The Secretary General of the Central Staff for Travel Services Coordination also called for the maximum use of railway services in order to increase safety and cheapen travel in the meeting on Sunday, May 25, 1401, while in the first day before the sale of train tickets for the Eid al-Fitr holiday, the capacity of commuter trains such as Mashhad , Yazd, Tabriz, Kerman, Shiraz have been completed and there is limited capacity in other “high-traffic” railways.
Given the life of the Travel Services Headquarters, which is close to a decade, it may be necessary to make changes in the form of management, planning and coordination of trips to prioritize the distribution of travel, time management and safe (health) destinations before each vacation. And other accidents), low-traffic and high-capacity areas, as well as unsafe and accident-prone roads should be identified and introduced to the public to be better used in the planning and management of public travel.
On the other hand, many member organizations continue to provide services to travelers in the traditional way, including municipalities and rural areas, while due to the significant population of travelers who use the camp or travel tent, it is necessary before the trips, camps and tents. Travel with basic facilities and services in cities, villages or their entrances, be identified and informed before the start of the holiday, and more importantly, cities that faced food shortages on Nowruz to use this experience to manage the Eid holiday.
Although the headquarters has launched a comprehensive tourism information system at 09629, which receives reports of violations and complaints, surveys show that many are unaware of this number and their complaints and reports are more expensive in cyberspace. They have shared and wondered where and through what authority they can pursue their complaint.
At the last meeting, the headquarters also announced that it would consider adding the Ministry of Jihad for Agriculture, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, and the Endowment and Charity Organization as new members, and would invite the private sector and non-governmental organizations to provincial headquarters meetings from now on. However, there is still no seat for the cultural heritage department, and this department, despite being the main attraction and destination of travelers, is a major absence of the travel services coordination staff, so that their management and planning are separate and without coordination with other departments and agencies. Is happening. The harm of this absence is evident in the fact that on Nowruz, a large wave of travelers went to historical sites and monuments without determining the bearing capacity of the building and the principles and standards of visiting them, and they suffered extensive damage, while no authority to deal with these problems in the coordination headquarters. There were no travel services, and on the other hand, the cultural heritage department was not responsible for this unprincipled way of planning the visit and management of historical monuments during the travel courier.