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Thursday March 28, 2024

At home away from home

By Shahzada Irfan Ahmed
May 28, 2019

Amna Khusheed is a resident of picturesque Sharda town in Neelum Valley, Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) and lives with six members of her family in a modest house. Her husband is a security guard at the Forestry Department and earns a meagre salary of Rs15,000 per month. This amount is not sufficient to meet the ever-increasing cost of living of the family what to talk about emergency needs.

Amna would always look for part-time work or income-generating activities like rearing hens, but this would not add much to the family income. However, over the last couple of months the family has seen a pleasant change in life. They are earning more and at the same involved in an exciting activity.

What happened was that Amna came to know about a promising initiative at a community-level meeting in her area. It was about up-gradation of rooms of local houses to accommodate tourists heading there, in the absence of sufficient and adequate boarding facilities.

Launched under the auspices of multiple non-profit organisations and a microfinance lender, the project offers interest-free loans to locals. With the help of these loans they can upgrade their rooms or build them from scratch, according to the modern living day standards.

These rooms are meant for tourist families who can stay here against payment and enjoy home-cooked food and hospitality of the host families. Last year, Kashmir attracted approximately one million tourists, according to the government of AJK, and about 50 to 60 percent of these went up to Neelum Valley.

Similar is the case of Rafea Khalid whose husband is a veterinarian and earns Rs18,000 per month. The family now markets the boarding facility it has to visiting families and earns additional income. Many families prefer this option because they want to have the feel of local culture and life as well.

Both these families are beneficiaries of a project carried out by Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) in collaboration with the Himalayan Wildlife Foundation (HWF) and Akhuwat. The former provides awareness among locals about the initiative, shortlists the applicants, carries out their trainings with the support of its local partner etc whereas the latter provides interest-free loans to the beneficiaries.

Of the total loan amount of Rs125,000, the contribution of AJK government is Rs75,000 whereas that of Akhuwat is Rs50,000.

As the infrastructure in this area is not that good and very few boarding facilities are available for tourists, the project aims at facilitating and attracting tourists. In summers, sometimes there are so many tourists that people with families stay on road and sleep in cars. In peak season, if there are families in cars, it is quite common for the locals to ask women and children to sleep in their houses for the night.

“We were comfortable when we were told that we can choose to only let families stay with us. As long as it is a family, we don’t mind. But we are definitely wary of men or boys who we cannot let in just like that,” says Rafea Khalid.

Neelum Azmat, Innovative Intervention Specialist at PPAF shares that within the first 97 days operation, on average 140 percent of the loan amount was earned back. This means 100 percent loan amount was recovered within this time and in addition to it 40 percent profit was earned.

She says to prepare the families for this new role, two members from each household had to join a 10 - day hospitality training followed by a 10-day refresher course. A charter of ‘ethics’ was also provided to the trainees explaining the do’s and don’ts while a copy of the same has been placed in each of the guest rooms as well, she adds.

Dr Muhammad Amjad Saqib, Founder of Akhuwat, tells The News that they have previously given such loans in Hunza valley. The rooms built through such loans help the tourists to find a home like place to live and the owner earns some money. He says during the off season the facility is used by the owner.

“We also provide training to home owner and the guest too. This helps nurture a culture of love, care and tolerance besides protecting environment. In fact it achieves triple bottom line.”

He shares they have received tremendous response and hope to see it increase manifold in the next season. Besides, he says, they plan to access new areas as well.

Under the project, households are selected according to multiple tiers. House has to be scenic, judged on a ranking of 100. Location/accessibility of the home carries 20 marks, accessibility of the room 15 marks, car parking 30 marks, scenic beauty 20 marks and construction quality 15 marks.

So far, 17 rooms have been successfully upgraded in Sharda and named after the local fauna and flora.

At least 83 more households are expected to be ready by October. A key focus has been on sanitation, since Tourists raise concerns regarding toilets the most.

After the provision of basic facilities for tourists, Sharda can also be marketed as an archaeological heaven because it houses ruins of the ancient Sharda University that dates back to the Buddhist era. It was once the centre of the spiritual education for Buddhists and Hindus and is named after the Hindu goddess Sharda, meaning the goddess of knowledge.