Tourism leader defends the industry’s jobs and pandemic management
The tourist businessman Rafael Blanco Canto criticized the call made by the politician Francisco Domínguez Brito about increasing controls at the country’s airports in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a press release, the businessman assured that “the evidence shows” that in the tourist poles of the Dominican Republic the incidence of the pandemic “is very low and that the possibility of outgoing tourists is almost zero”.
He added that 70% of the tourists who come to the country are from the United States, where more than 90% of the population is vaccinated, so proposing these measures is an attack on the country’s well-being and its economy.
In addition, he called on Francisco Domínguez Brito to practice “responsible politics” and not put at risk the more than 300,000 jobs that this sector generates, on which more than a million people depend.
Blanco Canto considered that Domínguez Brito’s statements “lack scientific and statistical basis.”
“I do not think it is correct to say that in order for us to stop the pandemic, we must put more controls at airports; the reality of Santo Domingo and some cities in the country is not the reality of the tourist poles and the nation needs tourism to recover so that we can all return to normality”, declared Blanco Canto.
The businessman assured that the Dominican Republic “is an example of how to properly handle the pandemic in the tourism sector” and that is why, he said, “it is the country that is recovering the fastest in the Caribbean, maintaining health control and economic growth at the same time”.