National Policy on standards for adventure activities

The Policy Development Office of Prime Minister’s Office has decided to work with the PM’s Committee of Vocational Training to develop a National Standard Qualification for Adventure Trainers.

Adventure Tourism and Adventure Training is fast becoming a popular industry. 

The Central Project Management Unit of the Ministry of National Policy and Economic Affairs, in furtherance of their tourism development initiate and the PDO of PMO, together the Sri Lanka Tourist Development Board recently convened a meeting of service providers and regulators in the sector. 

“The idea was to promote self-regulation,” the Policy Development Office said in a statement. 

“There are International Standards for all adventure activities, the need was for Sri Lankan Standards, equal to the international Standards to be developed.” 

The Sri Lanka Bureau of Standards is already involved in this task. “They were present and agreed to involve all stake holders in this process.” 

The meeting decided on the some important follow up steps; such as an SLTDB website on which all locations at which Adventure Activities are provided by service providers will be listed. 

The Sri Lanka Navy will convene a meeting of all water based adventure service providers to assess the present status, e.g. like at the wreck of the HMS Hermes off Batticoloa. 

In the same way, the Sri Lanka Air Force will coordinate air based adventure activities through a meeting of stake holders while the Special Forces of the Army will focus of land based adventure, the statement said. 

On the emergency communication and search and rescue, the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (TRC) will coordinate with telecommunication service providers and health and emergency first responders, to have a common number to call in case of a crisis. 

“The PDO of PMO will work with the PM’s Committee of Vocational Training to develop a National Standard Qualification for Adventure Trainers.” 

The Sri Lanka Insurance Board will be looking into the insurance cover aspect of adventure providers and participants. 

The consensus view of the meeting was that in the future, Adventure Tourism and Training will be increasing in popularity exponentially, and that the industry service providers should prepare for this and have best practice safety standards available, it said.