September 9: Tourist Guide Association of Nepal (TURGAN), an umbrella body of tourist guides of the country, has decided to demand increase in wages of tourist guides from January 1.  An emergency meeting of TURGAN on Saturday decided to seek pay hike of the guides by 40 percent.

According to the Kedar Tamang, president of TURGAN, guides are the major basis for tourism. Therefore, we want to draw the attention of the concerned authorities to implement the decision effectively.

According to TURGAN, the guides have been complaining of not increasing their salary as per the inflation rate in the last five years.  TURGAN said in a press statement that though it had been negotiating with Nepal Association of Tour and Travel Association (NATTA) to increase the wages, NATTA didn’t seem to be positive about it. TURGAN claimed that the wages of tourist guides has not been increased since 2014.