Heritage festival from April 18 at Saligao

TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: Goa Tourism Department will celebrate its first World Heritage Day with a four day heritage festival in the vicinity of Saligao’s Mae de Deus Church, a unique architectural edifice, in the constituency of Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar.
The festival will be held between April 18 and 21, with the inauguration at the football ground opposite the church and will showcase various artisans displaying their skills and craft such as pottery, woodcraft, handicrafts, besides a Goan food court managed by self help groups that would serve traditional Goan cuisine like sorpotel and sausage bread.
Addressing a press conference, Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar said that the four day festival was their first shot at heritage festival and that they expected to draw around 70,000 tourists mainly domestic, for the event.
“This is our first festival. We may not get as many foreign tourists at this time of the year, however domestic tourists are in large numbers at this time of the year. We seek to promote Goan heritage through this festival especially Goan cuisine, be it that of Hindu or Catholic households, as well as cultural heritage such as dances, theatre etc,” Parulekar said.
The festival is being organised jointly by the Tourism Department and the Goa Tourism Development Corporation. The programmes at the festival will include Goan dances such as kumbi, tiatrs, as well as persons dressed in traditional Goan costumes moving around and entertaining the crowd.
Goa Tourism Development Corporation Chairman Nilesh Cabral said that in the years to come they would include a package tour for tourists to coincide with the heritage festival. “We could hold these tours of all the heritage spots and culminate at the venue of the festival in the years to come,” Cabral said adding that this year the festival was being held in the backdrop of the Gothic designed church. In the years to come they could think of other heritage venues for their festivals.
As part of the celebrations a seminar is also being organised at the Saligao panchayat hall with lectures from the President of the Goa Heritage Action group Prajal Sakhardande, photographer Pantaleao Fernandes, and writer Naguesh Rao Sardessai.