Team Herald
PANJIM: Finally, there’s some movement from the State government on the appointment of a new public relations (PR) agency for the Tourism Department.
Government sources told Herald that the file, containing views and suggestions of Tourism Minister Manohar Azgaonkar and other tourism officials concerned, is under examination with the Finance Department.
“Tourism Minister, Tourism Director and other government officials who attended the presentation of the agencies held in August have given their opinion to the government. The file is now with the Finance Department. We expect a feedback soon,” a source in the Secretariat told Herald.
The department has delayed appointing a new PR for nearly a year. After cancelling the first tender notice of January 18 ‘on administrative grounds’, the department had reissued a tender “for exclusive PR and allied services of the Tourism Department” on July 10. Ad Factors, Concept PR and Public Relations participated in both the bidding processes.
The source revealed that in the re-tender notice, the same process like the opening of the technical bid, financial bid and the presentation by the participating PR firms was carried out and completed by August. Since then the PR firms are waiting for the decision.
Ad Factors, the present PR partner is on an extension according to the previous tender’s specification. Interestingly, the 2012 tender document had mentioned about the contract period of three years with two years extension.
The department is meanwhile making a swift move to appoint a beach cleaning contractor after Drishti Lifesaving Pvt Ltd’s tenure lapsed last month followed by their extension till March 2019. With just one agency from Bangalore Bharat Vikas Group qualifying the technical bid, the Tourism Department sought government’s intervention to decide whether to float fresh tender inviting bids for beach cleaning. Only two companies had submitted bids for the tender, the last date for which was December 5. A response from the government is still awaited.
