This is a hard reality check. Of what tourists to Goa experience and then report. This is a far more telling report than the best produced PPT on Goa Tourism. GLENN COSTA reports
The most common crimes affecting tourists are the motorcycle bag snatchers and the systematic robbing of deposit boxes at hotels. This season it was on Baga Road where 89 boxes out of 90 were robbed. There is usually at least one hotel per season where this happens and it is always blamed on a foreigner drugging the security guard, but it is always an inside job. There is organised crime in Goa and the biggest criminal gang is the police. They steal from everyone.
Similarly the Tourist Security Force spend(s) most days thieving. If they devoted a fraction of their time on preventing crime it would be virtually eliminated. They do nothing to help tourists and if you are unfortunate enough to be a victim of bag snatching it is likely to be logged as a lost bag. Corruption is engrained into all levels of society and there are reports giving details in the newspapers every day.
There have been continuous reports in the media over foreigners being targeted with the British government cautioning women tourists to be on their guard against theft and purse snatchers in specific areas in the North Goa coastal belt.
In January media reported one Trevor John Bennet telling Calangute police that his wife’s handbag containing a gold ring, a mobile phone and Rs 25,000 in cash was snatched by two people riding a bike last night. Before that a Russian woman tourist complained of a similar snatching by robbers astride a two-wheeler.
On Tuesday October 28, Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar and his entire pantheon of tourism politicians and officials will launch “Destination One”, billed as “Goa’s most innovative and exclusive hospitality hub.”
While the hub may be a good initiative to dovetail and showcase Goa tourism’s efforts, the hard realities which define the gap between such launches and the grim reality of a shoddy tourist experience that is in the much more widely followed social media space.
The Goa Police is perceived as a criminal gang and not a protector. The details above, in just one TripAdvisor review, is enough to send shudders down any system that handles tourism. However last week’s molestation of a Russian woman only shows that no lessons have been learnt.
The issue here is not even about the crimes- these happen even in the most developed of countries – but of the action after the crime is committed and the punishment for the crime. In Goa even murder cases linger on for years and in most cases the perpetrators are acquitted or the case gets diluted and sometimes even converted into an unnatural death case. Here is where the state fails, and fails very badly.
But in most cases the perpetrators get away with murder – literally. Even high profile cases like the killing of the British teen Scarlett Keeling who was found with a cocktail of drugs in her system, half nude, lying face down in the water, with multiple abrasions on her, are still lingering in the courts after so many years.
In most cases, the authorities get a little active as soon as the media takes it up and are then consigned to the bins as soon as the media pressure is off.
