With Goa government appointing KPMG Advisory Services and Tourism & Leisure Advisory Services to prepare the long pending tourism master plan, the stakeholders want a complete ban on the interference of politicians while majority also allege they have not invited for one-to-one interaction.
“There is a lot of political interference. The politicians should be strictly kept at bay because their intention is to garner vote banks. One should stick to the law and not do favourism at the cost of the State exchequer and environment,” a renowned face in the hospitality sector told Herald wishing anonymity.
Arguing that government should be blamed for the mess in the tourism sector, President of Private Beach Shack Owners Association Dharmesh Saglani alleged that tourism has witnessed 30-40 percent drop this year. “We know what the ground reality is. The agencies should take us into confidence to ensure tourism does not fall. The so-called consultants preparing the plan should have contacted us. We were only sent a letter seeking inputs. We need one to one interaction,” he stated.
Similarly, Shack Owners Welfare Society alleges absence of public participation. “We are not consulted while the master plan is being drafted. They forget to realize that tourism in Goa started because of us,” the association president Cruz Cardozo stated.
The tourism department justified that it had issued public media notices seeking inputs from all the stakeholders in the tourism industry even as the drafting of master plan is not complete yet. “The module 3 and 4 discussions are yet to take place. We are intending to call the stakeholders in person in future… They can, at present, send us their inputs which will be forwarded to the consultants,” a senior tourism official said.
The village panchayats and local bodies have also been roped-in for their contribution into the drafting of the master plan.
