It’s a rainy Friday and the Indian tourists have started trickling in on a long weekend break. With Dussehra, Sunday and Gandhi Jayanti all coming together, it’s a week for the tourism stakeholders to make a killing.
The taxi operators are looking at making a buck from the tourism off season and looking forward to doing some good business since it’s a long time for the Charters to bring in foreign tourists.
“During the monsoons, a lot of Indian tourists visit Goa and they bring some sort of business to us. When the season for the charters begins there’s hardly any business for us,” explains George Lobo a taxi driver.
George explains how the Russia charters have its own representatives who work in Goa on a tourist visa and sans a work visa.
All Russian guests and tourists from that entire belt buy their packages online nowadays and they pay up to Rs 30,000 in roubles. They buy packages through their own agencies and many locals have a tie-up with them and the hotels give their reps access to the hotel to come to the lobby and do business, often in dollars,” he added.
“The taxi operators are not allowed into the hotels but only to the drop off point besides the concierge,” asserted another taxi driver.
Jurgen D’Sa, who works as a chef in Varca, says many pizza outlets like are rented out premises and run by Italians and Danish citizens in Goa and all done through a local as a front. But also sometimes chefs working in these restaurants are foreigners married to local Goans.
“We struggle for FDA licences, police verifications, panchayat nod and all the paperwork for us and our staff while there are Russians and Italians running cafes, restaurants all that too illegally without paying taxes i.e taxes for foreign nationals earning an income of around 30% in Goa,” said another hotelier.
While a small musician Louis Silveira who works as a Karaoke DJ along the coastal belt in Mobor explains that English tourists on long-term holidays in Goa often pull out their guitars and saxophone and do small gigs across the shacks and restaurants in the coastal belt thereby eating into the business of the locals.
Not to forget Russian and Thai escorts and massage women who are available through online booking options which is the new fad in Mobor, Cavelossim and Benaulim which brings a bad repute to tourism in the South.
“There are so many foreign nationals working in the coastal belt from Benaulim to Cavelossim but nobody has taken up this issue and even when taxi drivers, restauranteurs, musicians or residents complain to the cops since these foreign nationals not just work in Goa illegally but also reportedly have a link to the multiple drug peddling activities, the cops have excuses from taking action by stating that the foreigner couldn’t be located,” stated Jayanth Thapa, a Nepali settled in Goa and working on the beach for a shack for the last 18 years.
“Cops fail to take action on restaurants run by foreign nationals even though some restaurants clearly state on trip advisor as Danish-run and Italian-run restaurants,” stated local Ankit Dessai who runs a small bar in Benaulim.
While another local Braulio Britto recently pointed out how a few foreign nationals were running an ATM stealing and pin stealing scam in ATMs on the coastal belt wherein they had access to the ATM’s official camera and were replicating people’s card details.
