By CALEB AYANSINA

A Director in the National Institute for Hospitality and Tourism (NIHOTOUR), Alh. Abdul Maji Sheriff, has called for proper funding of the institute to enable it fulfill its mandates.

NIHOTOUR was created to provide improved and quality service in the hospitality and tourism industry by introducing professional, technical and specialised training as well as post-graduate course in the travel and tourism and hospitality fields.

Sheriff made the appeal  at the handing over ceremony to the newly appointed Director General of the institute,  Mrs Chika Balogun, in Abuja recently.

He noted that the challenge of inadequate funding faced by the institute had denied staff of getting proper capacity building to be able to perform optimally.

Sheriff explained that this had been preventing the institute from getting training hotel which is germane to the realization of their mandates.

“Working on paper as we used to do cannot move us forward as workers need to be practically trained rather than on paper. We have tried to have our own training hotel but money released to us was too small to the extent that we have to return it,” Sheriff said.

In her remarks, Mrs Balogun said she believed in team work and with the cooperation of management and staff, they would overcome challenges.