Bindiya Chari,TNN | Oct 7, 2014, 12.30 AM ISTPANAJI: The just-concluded five-day 'extended weekend' drew an estimated 4 lakh desi tourists to Goa. While this meant peak-season business for most tourism stakeholders, the tremendous increase in footfalls and vehicles—from across the country—meant constant traffic jams in the coastal parts of the state, public littering, and rowdy behaviour from often drunk tourists.
It has seen a complaint letter being dashed off to the chief minister, even as tourism stakeholders are seconding the need for infrastructure to be put in place on a war-footing before the actual Christmas-New Year peak season that will attract international and desi tourists.
Soter D'Souza, a social activist, in his letter to chief minister Manohar Parrikar has explained what locals have to go through because of the "mass promotion" of Goa by the tourism department without the corresponding infrastructure development in the state.
"Day-to-day living of ordinary Goans is disrupted due to the indiscriminate and immodest promotion of tourism in Goa. This weekend's chaos is definitely not a one-off phenomenon, but it is increasingly becoming a regular feature almost every weekend and (during) the festive season when we Goans are literally made prisoners in our own land," states D'Souza. He adds, "This protest should not be construed as an opposition to tourism but to the criminal negligence of the government in respecting the state's carrying capacity for tourism activities."
As a perspective, almost all 2,935 hotels in Goa were booked for the October 2-6 period, with guesthouses and private homes that let out rooms on the sly also booked to capacity. An Anjuna-based hotelier said, "People sometimes let out a room in their home when all hotel rooms are booked, but this is only if the tourist has come to them with a reference. Nobody entertains strangers."
Randolph D'Souza told TOI that he overheard a group of tourists at the KTC bus stand in Panaji on Saturday evening complaining that they had arrived in Goa but had no where to stay. It was ditto for Valpoi-based mason B Chanappa, whose relatives had arrived from Karnataka on October 3, but could not find a place to stay in the Sinquerim-Baga area. And Papiha Desai, a resident of Saligao, had two tourists knock on the door of his second-floor flat at 11.30pm on Sunday, asking if he had a room to let. They had been going door-to-door in the neighbourhood.
Traffic along coastal Goa and the major towns was also a nightmare during this period. Dharmesh Angle, DySP traffic, told TOI that on any given day, an average of 90,000 vehicles enters Panaji, but the last five days saw over 1lakh vehicles enter Panaji, with the situation worse in Calangute and Candolim. "We had deployed about 450 police personnel to manage traffic in North Goa alone, but jams during peak hours were impossible to avoid mainly due to the narrow roads, and in Calangute, also because of the sewerage pipeline work," said Angle.
Savio Messias, vice-president, Travel and Tourism Association of Goa (TTAG) concurred, "At many places roads are being broadened, but the work is under way too slow." He warned, "This work has to be completed before the peak season hits."
Locals had to put up with tourists littering and urinating in public places, rowdy, drunken behaviour on roads and on beaches, and jostling for space in restaurants they visited with their families—schools after all were also on a break for the Gandhi Jayanti-Dussehra-Eid period. It prompted a member to complain to TTAG that if Goa continues to receive rowdy tourists it will soon lose its essence as a tourist hotspot. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/Goa-server-crashes-after-tourist-overload/articleshow/44530843.cms
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