Curb Irregularities In Mountain Rescue

The issue of ‘fake rescue’ has caused severe damage to Nepal’s international reputation as a safe tourist destination with ‘friendly, honest and ever-smiling people’. The matter seems to have now spread like wildfire globally due to widespread media coverage. As fake rescue is a disgraceful activity, both local and international media have kept on highlighting it by portraying the country in a negative light. 

If fake rescues are not prevented and the information that Nepali authorities do not compromise with anything when it comes to tackling such illegal practices is not circulated immediately, many prospective as well as international repeat travellers may remove Nepal from their list of travel destinations once and for all. With the massive dissemination of such negative news, numerous reputable international insurance companies might start showing their reluctance to cover their clients’ trips to Nepal.  

Attraction

It needs no reiteration that this Himalayan country is home to eight of 14 mountains above 8,000 metres, hundreds of other peaks, beautiful valleys, rivers, glaciers, lakes, and forests. Adventurers like trekkers, mountaineers and other nature lovers consider the country’s unique rugged topography with unrivalled beauty as a paradise on Earth. The exceptional cultural diversity and lifestyles of the different mountain ethnic communities are another important attraction for tourists to rejoice in. The country is renowned worldwide as a prominent destination for adventurers, especially trekkers and climbers.  

This tourism segment is vital for entrepreneurship development and job creation, as a large chunk of foreign and domestic tourists are now found to be showing their interest in adventure activities. Thousands of support staff like porters, chefs and kitchen helpers, trekking guides and mountain guides get a job in every tourist season. Many locals also make a living by operating restaurants, hotels and tea houses along trekking trails. The government also earns a lot of foreign currency by issuing climbing permit to mountaineers and peak climbers. The country may reap additional benefits from mountain tourism. For this, the government needs to focus on managing this sector in a sustainable manner.    

As part of its initiative to crack down on fake rescues, the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) under Nepal Police has lately filed a case at the Kathmandu District Court against as many as 32 individuals associated with some trekking companies, and helicopter chartered service firms and hospitals for their involvement in forged activities. This has raised much hope among genuine travel entrepreneurs that the perpetrators would be brought to justice and the country would stop reporting such crimes in the days to come. It is appalling that the authority has found them carrying out fake rescues of about 4,800 foreign trekkers and climbers between 2022 and 2025. Most of those tourists were ‘evacuated’ from the Everest region and admitted to concerned hospitals in Kathmandu for treatment. 

The accused were involved in such wrongdoing just to get rich overnight by cheating international insurance firms of millions of dollars. Nepali tour operators voicing for the elimination of such anomalies say that even foreign tour leaders had something to do with an increase in the number of fake rescues recorded in the country. Some profit mongers associated with the tourism sector are suspected to have begun operating fake rescues back in 2014. In 2017, then government was pressurised to form a committee that was assigned to probe into fake rescues, with several of such crimes surfacing. 

The probe team led by Ghanashyam Upadhyaya had indicted a few individuals and firms involved in fake rescues. Upadhyaya was serving as a joint secretary at the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation. The committee’s report showed that tourists had been rescued by helicopters from the mountain region and admitted to hospitals in Kathmandu. The alleged were also found claiming insurance payouts in an organised manner. 

But, the investigation report was not implemented and those indicted got scot-free. The report was submitted to the concerned ministry. But, what is more shameful is that the report is said to be unavailable now at the ministry. Who is responsible for its missing? Will those involved in misplacing the report face action? The government now needs to initiate the process of recovering the report and enforcing it so as to end such a state of impunity. If those found involved in fake rescues are not brought to justice, the country is sure to lose its credibility. 

Meanwhile, the CIB has clarified that it did not find any hotelier or teahouse operator in the mountain region to be involved in making tourists sick deliberately by adulterating food. Showing its grave concern over the recent dissemination of news that some foreign tourists were poisoned as part of fake rescue scam, the authority termed the news as ‘misleading’ based on unverified content. In a statement, the CIB called on one and all not to believe in such news. It further mentioned that its investigations did not find any instance of toxic substances being mixed in food. 

Separate rescue team

With the spread of such misinformation ruining the country’s destination image, the government must work on fake rescues urgently. Instead of allowing private companies to carry out rescue operations, it needs to form a separate rescue team with representatives from the concerned ministries, departments and tourist police. The team should also include a group of health workers.  It is also necessary to use digital technology for developing an app with an alarm option. The rescue team should be allowed to operate helicopters on a rotation basis. As a rescue is an emergency task, the process of issuing rescue permit must be simplified and efficient so as to save the lives of those in need.

(The author is a former deputy executive editor of this daily.)