Team Herald
PANJIM: Ahead of the tourist season slated to commence in the next few days, the tourism department has ensured that all the industry related trade activities follow the digital route with the launch of e-registration system on Sunday.
Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar launched the new e-service at the high-tech registration facilitation centre (RFC) at Paryatan Bhavan on the World Tourism Day.
“More and more young entrepreneurs want to be gainfully employed in the tourism sector through various tourism trades. The system will ease the load on all stakeholders, both new and existing by ensuring their services are registered online,” he said in the presence of Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar, Panjim MLA Siddhart Kuncalienkar and others.
While the entire process is digitized expect the first step being submission of applications, the department has assured to include it in the e-service by December-end. “The manual submission of application will be done away with. We are planning to stabilize the system by year-end wherein the entire process right from submitting the application for registration/renewal to issuance of certificates using digital signature will be online,” Tourism Director Ameya Abhyankar told a press briefing during a presentation highlighting the salient features of the e-service.
The five stage online registration, he said, is devised to process an application for registration of tourism trades within 8-10 days where no inspection is required, and around 12-14 days in case of inspections. “This has time based work flow system which begins from the time an application is inwarded till the application is process and approved by the dealing hand,” he explained.
Parulekar stated the system is introduced for speedy and transparent online registrations while also adding that more tech-savvy services will soon be added to the tourism sector.
A major highlight is that an applicant will be updated at regular intervals via SMS/email on the status of his/her application. The following stages for data entry, scrutinisation, intelligent verification, approvals and issue of authorised digitally signed registration certificates have all been integrated into a single window system. Once approved and communicated, the applicant can collect the registration certificate after paying the requisite registration fees.
In the second phase, the Goa Electronics Limited is working to introduce payment facility and provision to download digitally signed certificates, online and horizontal linking with other departments such as Goa State Pollution Control Board, District Collectorates, Municipal Councils, Village Panchayats, Transport, Captain of Ports, etc.
