Foreigners among 15,000 tourists visit Ghazni this year

GHAZNI CITY (Pajhwok): The number of local and foreign tourists visiting historical places in southern Ghazni province has been on the increase since last one and a half years, an official says.

Mansoor Afghan, an official of the provincial Information and Culture department, told Pajhwok Afghan News that about 15,000 tourists visited historical areas in Ghazni this year. They included more than 100 foreigners.

He said local tourists were from different provinces and foreign tourists who visited the province belonged the US, Canada, Germany, Andorra, Kenya, Norway, Turkey, Holland, Poland, Italy, Macedonia, Spain, Egypt, China, France and neighboring countries.

He said the number of foreign tourists was increasing with each passing day. “Tourists visit Ghazni’s historic monuments, museum, national park, shrines and other ancient landmarks”.

Just last week, he said, Charles from Kenya, Omar Hamid from Spain and Julian Bosch from Germany was a group of foreign tourists who visited historic places in Ghazni city.

About facilities being provided to tourists, he said, all required facilities had been provided to tourists. He said security was completely ensured and anyone could visit Ghazni for tourism purposes.

Baryalai Gran, a visitor from northern Balkh province, said: “Ghazni has many ancient and historic places like shrines, monuments and landmarks, which worth visiting again and again.”

He added thousands of artifacts existed in the Ghazni museum belonging to the pre-Islamic and post-Islamic periods (Bactria, Kushan, Ghaznavi, Ghori, Sassanid empires).

He said these artifacts were made of stone, metal, leather, clay, tile and copper and some of them 2500 years old.

Local residents said the number of foreign and local tourists could further increase if the government provided more facilities and speeded up reconstruction works.

Nazar Mohammad, a resident of Ghazni city, told Pajhwok the government should repair roads which had been destroyed by the war and should execute other development projects to attract tourists. He said tourism could boost local economy, which would benefit both the government and local people.

More than 200 historic monuments, ancient areas and entertainment places exist in Ghazni.

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