Team Herald
CANACONA: With the Tourism Department suspending the cleaning of the Polem beach since October this year, there has been heaps of garbage littered on the 600-metre beach turning it into an eyesore for hundreds of domestic and foreign tourists who daily flock to this beach located near the border of Goa in South.
Residents living near Polem beach are astonished over the fact that the six labourers who used to clean the Polem beach of the littered waste on a daily basis for the past two years had suddenly stopped the beach cleaning job in October.
A local speaking to this correspondent complained that since the labourers stopped cleaning the beach after October, the beach is infested with mounds waste ranging from plastic to glass.
“There are beer bottles, plastic bags, nets, PET bottles and wrappers discarded on this beach giving it an ugly look,” he said.
Despite the law prohibiting drinking in the open, many domestic tourists mostly from the other side of the border at Polem come to the beach with beer bottles and drink on the beach, some even break these bottles when they get drunk causing nuisance to everyone around, another infuriated resident complained.
When this correspondent visited the beach there were some groups of men sitting on the beach consuming beer and liquor bought from wholesale shops beside the NH66 near the Polem beach.
They carelessly left the bottles on the beach strewing them and wrappers at the spot they were sitting.
Sources said that the beach cleaning has been stopped as Polem beach is not considered as a tourist destination by tourism department.
Even though Polem beach is not displayed on the tourism map of Goa, this beach being less crowded attracts thousands of tourists and the tourism department has to make arrangements to keep this beach clean just as they maintain other beaches of Goa, asserted the residents in unison.
