TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: Admitting that it had no answer to problems such as garbage and is nowhere close to rationalizing the taxi related issues, the government, on Saturday, claimed it needed private participation to solve these major issues. The government also said that it felt that the Coastal Regulation Zone and No Development Zone norms needed to be relaxed in certain sections of the coastal belt to boost tourism.
“We have realized that the government cannot solve issues such as infrastructure, beach cleaning and garbage on its own. To do so we need private partnerships,” GTDC chairperson Nilesh Cabral told media at a press interaction.
Cabral reasoned that the state government was trying its best to improve the infrastructure and was aware that these were the issues that were hindering the inflow of high-end tourists. He said the government was trying to focus lots of issues that had to be looked into, but it had its limitations including financial limitations.
Another issue was that of tourist taxis but despite meetings between stakeholders and former Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar and Travel and tourism Association of Goa, there was minimal progress on the issue. The government tried to point to its new initiative of 10 women taxis as a proof of its sincerity. However, insiders and stakeholders pointed out that this did not hold much water as there were 11,000 odd taxis and the basic problem in solving these issues was the lack of political will.
Admitting, that charter tourist arrivals had dropped by 35 per cent this season, Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar said that the department was looking at other markets and had held discussions with the Centre in a bid to salvage the fortunes of tourism in Goa.
The Union government was asked to reduce tariffs for visas, revise and include Goa in its charter policy and have an open sky policy as well as increase the parking for aircrafts and make arrangements for wide bodied aircraft to land.
“There is a drop in chartered tourist arrival by almost 35 per cent compared to last year. Around 850 chartered flights have arrived in the current tourist season compared to 1148 last year,” Cabral said.
He said that charter flights faced problems as there were was “no facility at the airport for overnight parking. Also, there are restrictions in terms of landing of air planes because the airport is a naval facility.”
“We will be offering incentives to chartered flights who bring in more tourists. There is visa-on-arrival (VOA) facility extended to various countries. We will be asking for central assistance for marketing in those countries where VOA facility is offered,” Cabral said, adding that the Tourism department had appealed to the Union Civil Aviation ministry to allot slots for scheduled international airlines.
