The president of the Association of Tourist Agencies of Serbia (UTAS), Marija Matijevic, said today that the deadline by which the agencies that received the first tranche of state aid were obliged to keep workers due to problems caused by the pandemic had expired and that they would lose their jobs if the state did not help again.
“We hope that the state will listen to us and respond positively to the letter we sent to the new Minister of Tourism, Tatjana Matic, on Thursday. In the letter, we asked to discuss our burning problems by the end of next week and save the agencies,” Matijevic said in a statement for Tanjug.
She warned that if travel agencies do not receive financial assistance and if a solution to the problem with insurance policies is not found, about 4,000 employees in the agencies will lose their jobs these days, and the agencies will be closed.
“Today, we have a situation where people are saying goodbye to the industry on social networks. That will be the case if the state does not help us,” she said.
She added that the second wave of dismissals and closures of agencies could follow at the beginning of next year, until when the workers are obliged to keep those who received the second part of the state aid.
Associations of travel agencies, among other things, ask that the organizers of tourist trips be helped with non-refundable 10 to 40 thousand euros, depending on the type of license.
The Association of Travel Agencies (UTAS) and the Association of Independent Travel Agencies (ANTAS) yesterday again appealed to the relevant ministry to urgently solve the problem of blocking the work of travel agencies and warned that 4,000 people would lose their jobs.
The blockade of agencies, as they stated, increases the chances that they will go bankrupt en masse and thus leave passengers without alternative travel, Politika reports.
