PESHAWAR: The Tourism Corporation Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is organising a function at the Peshawar Museum here in connection with the World Tourism Day today (Saturday).

TCKP managing director Mushtaq Ahmad Khan told a meeting here on Friday that WTD 2014 was being held under the theme `Tourism and Community Development` with special focus on the ability of tourism to empower people and provide them with skills to change their local communities, according to a press release.

Mr Khan said that dignitaries, tourism stakeholders, including a 20-member delegation of Motorcycle Association of Pakistan, which had undertaken a tour to Supat Valley last weekend, and students, would participate in the function. He said that adviser to the chief minister on tourism Amjad Afridi would be the chief guest on the occasion.

The TCKP managing director said that tourism was a people-based economic activity built on social interaction, and as such could only prosper if it engaged the local population by contributing to social values such as participation, education and enhanced local governance. At the same time, he added, there could be no real tourism development if such development damaged in any way the values and the culture of host communities, or if the socio-economic benefits generated by the tourism sector didn`t trickle down to the community level.

`Local populations should be associated with tourism activities and shared equitably the economic, social and cultural benefits they generate,` he maintained.