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The Chandigarh administration has decided to launch tourism police in Chandigarh on World Tourism Day on September 27, 2008. The decision to form a tourism police squad was taken in order to provide safety and security to the common people of the city as well as the tourists. The new tourism squad under went training at the Chandigarh Institute of Hotel Management a few days back. The training programme sponsored by the Department of Tourism, Chandigarh Administration instructed about 100 police personnel in four batches of 25 each.
According to the officials of Chandigarh Tourism Department, the main objective of forming such tourism squad is to promote safe tourism in the city. All the police personnels of the tourism squad will be placed at different places of interest in Chandigarh. The Tourism Director, Mr. Vivek Atray said that since Chandigarh is the epicenter of three states (Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh); such type of special squad was very much required for the city. The introduction of such a squad on World Tourism Day is witty step as far as expansion of Chandigarh tourism industry is concerned.
The training given to the police personnel of the tourism squad includes teaching of foreign languages like English, French and Italian so as to enable them to interact with foreign tourists. Besides this, they were also given lessons on personal grooming & hygiene, motivation, leadership, stress management and tourism basics. The main duty of the tourism police will be to assist the tourists to get proper lodging and transport facility at railway station, airports, bus terminals, important tourist places and malls. Besides, these they will try to restrict all sorts of social evils and protect the people from cheats and black marketers.
