By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, December 7, 2015 : Odisha has chalked out a plan to invest Rs 70 crore in this fiscal for expansion of tourism-related infrastructure.

State Tourism and Culture Minister, Ashok Chandra Panda on Monday said, “The government is focused on creating direct and indirect employment opportunities in the tourism sector which has huge potential.”

Panda was speaking at the inaugural ceremony of ‘Hunar Se Rozgar Tak’, [HSRT] a government-sponsored two-month-long capacity building course at the School of Hotel Management (SHM) under the SOA University here.

The minister further said the government was planning to set up a chain of 15 restaurants in the public private partnership [PPP] mode on the national highways within the state to be known as ‘Jajabar’.

“The employability of a person gets enhanced with the acquiring of skill,” he said while expressing happiness over the HSRT program being taken up by the University.

The HSRT is a central government initiative aimed at providing skill based hospitality training to people in the age group of 18 to 28 from the economically weaker strata of the society to make them employable in the tourism and hospitality industry.