Government cuts sorry figure in CAG report (herald)

October 11, 2013 TEAM HERALD PANJIM: The CAG has pulled up the state government saying that records of rising crimes against children and women were an indication of the ineffectiveness of crime control mechanism in the state and the fact that it relies on tourism, the tourism policy was found to be deficient. The Government of India had adopted a model code of conduct for safe and honourable tourism in 2010. According to the CAG report from 2007 to 2011 the crimes against tourists had shown an increasing trend except in 2011. The states monitoring and regulatory mechanism could not ensure effective beach inspections, cleanliness, availability of basic amenities, and regulation of beach shacks and argued that there was 85% shortfall in annual food safety inspections of registered establishments by the FDA. Also inspite of the depletion of ground water in Calangute and Anjuna the Water Resources Department did not have any statistics on wells dug and number of violations. Also the sewerage and waste management in the coastal belt was not effective. According to the 10 tourism projects proposed with central assistance only one was under execution, three were yet to be approved and remaining 6 were held up for want of approvals or permissions. The CAG also brought out that the Tourism department spent Rs 62.01 during 2007 to 2012 on 446 advertisements and on scrutiny of 40 advertisements it was observed that these publications were not registered with the registrar of newspapers in India and did not comply with the requirements of the press and Registration Of Books Act 1867. http://www.heraldgoa.in/News/Local%20News/Government-cuts-sorry-figure-in-CAG-report/80509.html