¦ You have recently presented your agenda for this year and you highlighted food security, socioeconomic challenges and the environment as your priorities. Why the environment?

Because we have lost a lot of our trees through deforestation and this has affected rainfall. We also have many areas which are totally naked, which have got no trees, no greenery and this is robbing Mauritius is its natural beauty. What attracts tourists here is the beauty of the island. So, we want to retrieve that lost virtue and give back to Mauritius that green cover and flowery appearance.

¦ Another one of your concerns seems to be food security. What are your worries?

Well, there have been so many cases of food poisoning which have to do with the unhygienic conditions in which food is sold to unsuspecting members of the public or to school children. If we are not careful on the preventive side, upstream, we are going to pay the price downstream. In other words, having to cure people who have already contracted various infections.

¦ Does health improvement not depend upon the consumer? We don’t care where we eat, we don''''t care in what conditions the food is served to us.

Yes, adult education is a big issue which we have not touched upon. But it is an issue we will have to tackle one day.

Our main focus at the level of the NESC is to really deepen the democratic process through dialogue to reach consensus on major national issues.

¦ Is tourism considered a major national issue for the NESC?

Yes, it is. For example, in 2008, we invited the tourist sector to accompany us on a trip to China and sell Mauritius while we talked to people at the highest level. They declined because they were concentrating on Europe and Australia.

The whole population of Australia is less than 25 million, whereas in China there are over 40 million tourists.

¦ Is it not legitimate for the tourist sector to concentrate its efforts on the high spending tourists?

That is not true. You have to look at various surveys which have been conducted.

The Indian and Chinese tourists are affluent people we are not talking about backpack tourism. The Indians that come here spend in dollars. The Chinese are amongst the biggest spenders. The Indians and Chinese spend more than the Europeans. The Europeans come on packages.

One part of the package goes to the tour organizer, one part goes to the carrier and one part goes to the hotels. So if already the package is fairly moderate, the hotels only get one third at most. There are not many tour organizers in India and China. They come here on their own and spend their own money.

¦ Why do you think the hotel industry is not keen on encouraging Asian tourists if they are that profi table?

There are many things which are difficult to understand about the hotel operators. It is diffi cult to understand, for example, why Mauritians are themselves denied access to our hotels.

¦ All Mauritians are denied entry?

Oh yes. If you go to a hotel they deny you entry or ask you why you want to go in. Why do people want to go into a hotel? Why do they treat Mauritian citizens like that?

¦ Are you saying that the hotels should be open to every Tom Dick and Harry to go and swim in their swimming pools and lie down on their grass without paying anything?

If you go to the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, you enter and use the restrooms and there is someone who will tender a towel to you. Nobody asks you why you want to go there. And we are talking about 5 and 6 star hotels. Here, what we have is an unoffi cial apartheid, which is practiced against Mauritians. If you are with visitors from overseas, you feel so humiliated in your own country!

Read the  complete version of the interview in l’express-epaper

Touria PRAYAG