Calangute: In all, 10 shacks were shut down on Wednesday by the Goa State Pollution Control Board (GSPCB) which sent a team to physically verify that the shacks have the consent to operate.
However, beach shack owners in Calangute and Candolim were a confused lot on following Tuesday’s high court order to shut down around 161 shacks for operating without the consent of the GSPCB.There are around 200 shacks along the Calangute-Candolim beach stretch.
Shack Owners Welfare Society’s general secretary John Lobo said the GSPCB has started the process to check all the shacks and would issue the consent-to-operate after verifying that shacks have complied with their directions.
“This process will take a few days because they have to walk to the shacks on the beach. Whichever shacks have not applied to the GSPCB will have to do so and once they get the consent to operate, they can reopen. The court order is very clear,” Lobo said.
Many shacks have already completed the process and would receive the consent to operate after the GSPCB inspection, he said.
Manuel Cardozo, president of the Traditional Shacks Owners Association, who is one of the affected, said he had not received any shutdown order till Wednesday evening. “There is complete confusion. It is a wait-and-watch situation,” he said.
Cardozo said the confusion has come about because shack owners were never informed about requiring the consent-to-operate when they started their shacks for this season. “When we had received the shack licence three years ago, the GSPCB consent-to-operate certificate fee had been increased from Rs 250 to Rs 7,500, and we had been told it would be valid for seven years. Now suddenly the high court order has come,” he said.
