DROPPING CRIME RATE GOOD NEWS FOR SEYCHELLES TOURISM
(Posted 10th January 2014)
Seychelles’ Minister for Home Affairs and Transport, Joel Morgan, earlier this week, on the occasion of honouring long serving police officers and recognizing their often challenging work, revealed a significant drop in crimes recorded in 2013 when he reportedly said: ‘By being pro-active, it has impacted positively on crime reduction in general in Seychelles, causing it to decline by a remarkable 29.27%. This result has not come haphazardly but rather it has happened as a result of assessments, planning, training and an overall methodical approach to deliver the day-to-day service of policing in a manner that was most likely to have a direct and positive impact in general’.
A source from the Seychelles’ tourism fraternity applauded this trend, saying improved security and reduced crime by 30 percent would only add to the archipelago’s appeal to bring in tourists, though at the same time called for continued vigilance by security organs to make sure that petty thefts on beaches were kept in check.
The Seychelles’ government has over the past years increasingly targeted drug trafficking as well as drug use and what is called anti social behaviour in public places and while the local people are the main beneficiaries of reduced crime, so are tourists of course as general security across the islands has made it even safer for them to walk in villages and the capital Victoria, take strolls at the beach and enjoy a trouble free vacation.
Visitors coming to the islands by air in fact should be aware that on arrival sniffer dogs habitually check baggage of arriving passengers and that the import, even of small quantities of drugs, will result in prompt arrest, prosecution and depending on various factors, at times lengthy jail time. Said the source, perhaps tongue in cheek, when discussing the latter aspect: ‘Anyone coming to our paradise islands needs no drugs to enjoy themselves. We offer paradise and paradise cannot be improved by anything and definitely not by drugs’. Wise words for sure from one of the islands’ tourism stakeholders who surely knows what he is talking about. Seychelles, Another World.
