Says Tourism dept ended up spending Rs 6.81 crore
TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: The State Tourism Department overspent funds to the tune of Rs 5.63 crore on advertisements to the electronic media, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has said in its report for the year ending 2012.
Castigating the government (this was during the period when Digambar Kamat was Chief Minister), the CAG has said that when the state government rates, charged by its agency were compared to rates of the Department of Audio Visual Publicity, Government of India it would have been much less.
“It was observed that for a similar campaign, where the Central government departments would have spent only Rs 1.18 crore, the department ended up spending Rs 6.81 crore,” the CAG said.
“The entire budget meant for the electronic campaign during the year was spent in one campaign (Zee TV and BBC) which was proposed by the agency M/s AMO Communications Pvt Ltd),” the CAG said in its report.
The State Tourism Department conducted an electronic campaign through M/s AMO Communication, one of its empanelled agencies on Zee TV and BBC in September-October 2007, November 2009 and August 2010.
“Several deciding factors for the rates of commercials on the television i.e. time of the day, original broadcast, repeat broadcast, status of broadcast were not considered and the lump sump quotes were requested from the empanelled agencies and accepted,” the CAG reported.
The CAG report also hit out at another agency Vinsan Graphics. Vinsan proposed in October 2010 a multimedia campaign for a total cost of Rs 1.80 crore. The campaign centred on a micro site showcasing Goa. The micro site www.experience-goa.com was designed and used for three months.
“The website lacked sufficient information. There were only four tour operators listed in it and no list of private or GTDC hotels were displayed. The absence of a visitors’ count left the department unable to assess the number of visitors to the site,” the CAG said.
“As part of the multimedia campaign, the agency claimed Rs 25-lakh @ 8.33 per message for sending 3-lakh messages. However, the department was totally unaware of the message recipients,” the CAG reported.
“Further the agency (Vinsan Graphics), as part of a multimedia campaign also advertised through a TV channel, at rates higher than that offered by DAVP leading to an extra expenditure of Rs 44.37 lakh.
