From correspondents in Delhi, India, 07:32 PM IST

India faces a dearth of trained foreign language professional guides but the government is making efforts to meet the requirement, Tourism Minister Ambika Soni said Thursday.

She said there are 904 professional guides in the country who speak various languages, including German, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and Korean.

She told the Lok Sabha a recent court order had stopped the tourism ministry from appointing guides. But the ministry was going to appeal against the order, she said.

'The ministry of tourism makes every effort to meet the requirement of qualified guides including that of foreign languages on the basis of market assessment by following a transparent procedure of examination and training,' Soni said.

(Staff Writer, © IANS)