PANJIM: Tourism Minister Rohan Khaunte has allayed fears of corporatisation of water sports activity and called upon all the stakeholders to refrain from indulging in illegalities.
Khaunte said that the Goa Tourism Board discussed the issue of water sports activities on the beaches and found that there were drastic problems which was challenging for the tourism industry.
If you enjoyed reading this article, you can help support our journalism by adding OHeraldo as a preferred source.
He said that the Department of Tourism had written to the Captain of Ports requesting them not to issue permission to boats for tourism activity without NOC from the Department of Tourism. The request was made because beaches in the State were saturated and it was resulting in fights between the water sports operators.
As per office records, there were 2,149 water sports operators/activities registered in North Goa beaches and 341 were registered at South Goa beaches under the Goa Registration of Tourist Trade Act 1982. After bifurcation of records, it was seen that some of the beaches namely Calangute, Baga, Candolim, Anjuna, Nerul Coco Beach, Sinquerim and Sinquerim Jetty in North Goa and Colva in South Goa were overcrowded with water sports activities.
With the manifold increase in water sports operators/activities on the beaches of Goa, the government by an order dated May 9, 2022 decided not to issue/grant any new licences/NOCs to water sports operators/activities in the State until further orders.
Secondly, in order to reduce the compliance of the various touristic services by simplifying the procedure of registration/renewal from point of view of `Ease of Doing Business’, the government decided to rationalise and reduce the documents pertaining to various touristic services, which were required for new registration/renewal.
As per revised documents, the Department of Tourism had omitted licences/NOCs from Captain of Ports and Fisheries Department for registration/renewal of water sports activities on the beaches of Goa.
During the meeting held on September 15, 2022 it was decided that in order to streamline certain things like transparency in business, uniformity in rates etc, it is necessary to obtain first NOC from the Department of Tourism and instructed Deputy Director of CoP to ensure the same before giving NOC/fitness from CoP.
