Team Herald
CALANGUTE: Visitors to Candolim beach are having a bad experience due to harassment by hawkers and touts, villagers said at the gram sabha on Sunday.
“Tourists are not happy because they are being harassed by Lamanis. The moment they come to the car park at the promenade, they are surrounded by Lamani hawkers and even when they say they don’t want to buy anything, the Lamanis keep chasing them on the beach. This has been going on for years and nothing is being done about this,” a villager said at the gram sabha.
Following demands from villagers, the gram sabha adopted a resolution to form a ‘beach monitoring committee’ under the village development committee (VDC) to crackdown on illegal hawkers and touts on the beach.
After aggrieved shack owners raised the issue of shacks being shut down recently following a high court order, Candolim sarpanch Fermino Fernandes said the panchayat has taken the responsibility to clear all sewage from beach shacks in the village to avoid any hardships to shack owners.
Shack owners claimed that while their shacks were sealed because they failed to upload one “document”, hawkers and touts were having a free run on the beach. “Who gives the licences to these people? Shacks of locals were shut because we did not upload a document. But who gives licences to them? Despite taking all licences, we had to sit at home, but these people – hawkers, touts – were all over the beach,” a villager said.
Sarpanch Fernandes said the panchayat has always stood with the villagers and supported them by stepping in to clear the sewage so that they could restart. The problem of hawkers and touts is for the police to handle, he said.
Villagers also raised the issue of parking of vehicles on the roads thereby blocking the roads, especially during the night. Former sarpanch Blaize Fernandes said the problem could be resolved if the timings of the vehicle towing van, which currently only operates till 7.30pm, could be extended by a few hours.
The largely attended gram sabha also discussed a number of other issues.
