The Responsible Traveler

As travel health professionals, we are all working under the broad umbrella of world health concerns and regularly giving advice to travellers on how best to look after themselves. Let us also show concern for the countries that are hosting our travellers, be aware of the negative effects that tourism can have and support the need for responsible tourism and travel.

These issues are addressed by the ISTM Host Countries Committee, the committee that helped produce The Responsible Traveller Guidelines. The Guidelines were distributed to all delegates at the conference in New York and appeared in the previous edition of NewsShare (July/August 2003). The Guidelines can be downloaded from the ISTM website. Also available is a yellow bookmark card stating the “Seven Tips for Responsible Travel.” The cards can be ordered from the ISTM office and distributed in your travel clinic waiting rooms.

From time to time we will bring your attention to organizations that we feel are working in the area of responsible travel. One such organization is featured here.

Radical Move by UK Trek Tour Operators Helps Transform Mountain Porters Lives

Tourism Concern is a London-based, charity, membership organisation that has been campaigning for ethical and fairly traded tourism since 1989. They work with people worldwide to promote tourism that benefits the host countries' communities by raising the awareness of the negative impacts of tourism: economic, cultural, environmental and social. Host country communities often find that they have tourism imposed upon them by governments, foreign developers and the tourism industry. Often there is little linkage between tourism, especially tourism on a mass scale, and local industry, such as agriculture. Land and natural resources are frequently co-opted, often illegally, and local cultural traditions are appropriated and commercialised.

Tourism Concern has launched a campaign that has prompted action amongst British trekking operators to protect porters used by their trips, working with operators taking treks to the Himalayas, Macchu Pichu in Peru and Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Some observers estimate that porters are four times more likely to fall ill or die on trips as trekkers, the result of hypothermia, dehydration or altitude sickness. Porters in mountain regions frequently earn as little as £2 a day, carry loads of up to 60 kg, go without boots or jackets, and are often left to sleep outside. Often they receive insufficient food, sometimes even being denied the leftovers from trekkers' meals, particularly on Macchu Pichu or Kilimanjaro. In extreme cases, porters believe they are simply seen as "beasts of burden". In the words of a Peruvian porters' syndicate: "We suffer humiliation upon humiliation, and are treated as less than human... If we protest, we simply won't be re-contracted: we don't have any other employment options." A tour operator in Pakistan is even more direct: the way porters are treated, he says, "amounts to modern slavery."

Tourism Concern's message is `Do go trekking - it is a vital income for trekking communities. But now please go with an operator who has committed to protecting its porters.' Scottish ex-police officer Jonny Gibb, who won the £1m Survivor prize in May this year, was shocked to see three porters die on his celebratory trek and welcomes Tourism Concern's campaign. "After I won Survivor I left my job and decided to treat myself to a trek up Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain," says Jonny. "We assumed the cost of the trip included looking after porters and were horrified that this didn't happen. I saw porters carrying our luggage wearing just flip flops or thin golf shoes. It was freezing cold. Three of them died of cold on one night after having to sleep out in very bad weather conditions. I was keen to go on the trip, but I wasn't desperate enough for people to die."

When Tourism Concern contacted UK trekking and climbing operators, they discovered that only a few operators had well-defined policies concerning porters. Most operators said that they left responsibility for porters to the companies in the destination country and did not know what would be done if porters were injured or fell ill. Few set guidelines on the weights of loads porters carried, wages, or protective clothing and footwear.

Suggested guidelines on porters' working conditions were then drawn up by tour operators, porters' groups and Tourism Concern. As a result, 40 of the 81 tour operators in the United Kingdom (UK) that were contacted by Tourism Concern now have policies to provide essential protection, fair pay and humane working conditions. (The names of the cooperating tour operators are available on the Tourism Concern website.)

Examples of the problem and progress:

• Himalayas: Kul Bahadur Rai's story: Nepalese porter Kul Bahadur Rai was hit by altitude sickness while carrying a heavy load for tourists. Rapid descent is the effective and simple cure for altitude sickness. But an unsympathetic trek sirdar (trek foreman) made Kul Bahadur go on, then left him to descend alone. Kul Bahadur slipped into a coma and woke in hospital to find that his frostbitten feet had to be partially amputated. Early this year a porter in Nepal was found unconscious by the side of a trail. He had been forced to carry his load until he was unable to go any further, then left with no money to make his way down the mountain alone.

PROGRESS: The International Porter Protection Group (IPPG) (www.ippg.net) and the Himalayan Explorers Connection (HEC) (www.hec.org) have improved conditions for porters significantly. They have established Porter Clothing Banks, provide safety education, and have built shelters, including a porter rescue post in the notorious Gokyo "death" valley. This post will also help trekkers in distress. Nepali porters are now beginning to be rescued by helicopter. Some trekking companies are now providing tents for their porters and have food cooked for them by the trekkers' kitchen staff. An HEC member is providing scholarships for Kul Bahadur Rai's children's education.

• Pakistan has no such porter support system. As Agha Igrar Haroon, President of the Ecotourism Society of Pakistan explains: "Porters are poor people and the majority work without proper insurance and without proper clothing. They receive no proper training and get next to nothing if they are injured or disabled while working. Foreign tour operators can play a great role in protecting porters' rights. They should ask the ground agents about the facilities they provide for porters before giving them business, and not just give business to the cheapest ground agent. Tour operators shouldn't try and keep costs down at the expense of basic human rights."

• Kilimanjaro, Tanzania: Tourism Concern has received reports of sick porters being abandoned by tour operators, of porters frequently working without shoes or proper equipment, and of guides bribing the rangers who weigh the porters' loads, so that porters end up carrying huge weights. Guides choose porters on the basis of payments and bribes and threaten those who refuse to pay with no more work. Kilimanjaro National Park has described Tourism Concern's campaign as "a justifiable and achievable cause."

Three porters died on September 17th last year. One died working in cold, driving rain dressed only in trousers and a T-shirt and then sleeping out all night, as the porters' accommodation was full. Two others froze to death overnight.

PROGRESS: A new porters' association, the Kilimanjaro Porters Association, has been created which "has reinforced guides' discipline as well as operators' discipline, as they are no longer able to bulldoze porters and have now to treat them fairly well." HEC is opening an office in Kilimanjaro to address the needs including clothing, shelter and education of mountain porters.

• Macchu Pichu, Peru: Official guidelines for trekking the Inca Trail have been established, including ensuring a maximum weight of 20kg for packs carried by porters. Packs are weighed by government officials before treks. However, last September, porters went on strike, demanding regulation on porters' wages and a minimum wage of US$30 per four day trek. This May, 1000 members of the Inca Trail porters' union marched to protest that the minimum wage was not being paid. They presented a letter to relevant authorities asking for the good example of one operator to be replicated which provides appropriate clothing, provides the same food as is provided for tourists (rather than leftovers), respects the maximum legal weight limit of 20kg, and "treats their porters like real human beings."

For more information about Tourism Concern, visit www.Tourismconcern.org.uk or email info@tourismconcern.org.uk. (Please note that a typing error resulted in the wrong address being given for Tourism Concern in the Responsible Tourism document which appeared in the previous issue of NewsShare.)