Frequent power cuts in Goa have become the order of the day, especially in Goa’s most popular coastal belt. The power cuts come at a time when the State’s Tourism Minister Manohar Ajgaonkar is abroad promoting the state as a tourism destination in shores afar.
If there’s anything that will give Goa a bad name it is the frequent power cuts that both locals and tourists alike have to suffer especially during this holiday season.
Over the last few weeks, the people of Calangute, Siolim and Saligao constituencies, as well as several other parts of the state, have had to deal with power cuts sometimes as frequent as every fifteen minutes with the power being off more often than it was on.
The irate public has confronted officials of the electricity department repeatedly, but that hasn’t helped the situation.
The timing of the power cuts especially if they come the same evening or immediately after a scheduled power shutdown, which reportedly is to fix the very faults that are causing the power shutdowns is especially baffling.
If the scheduled shutdowns do not rectify the problem that causes the power to fail, why have the scheduled shutdown at all?
One can’t escape the feeling that the power situation in Goa has gone progressively worse despite crore of rupees having been invested in power infrastructure and the government also charging an infrastructure tax on new power connections.
Undoubtedly, the demand for power has grown manifold over the last few years, but so has the infrastructure. The State has invested in underground cabling and other enhancements more than a decade ago, which were then advertised as being the solution to many of the power ills.
The power minister has continuously insisted that the situation will be remedied through new substations all of which have been sanctioned, but the work on them is laboriously slow and the end to the troubles is nowhere in sight.
In this situation, promoting Goa as a tourist destination in lands far and wide will only end up being an empty exercise and a junket for those taking part in the trip. A bad “review” of the power situation in the state is enough to undo not just the promotions being done by the department but also the reputation as a tourist-friendly destination that Goa has built over the years.
Tourism and good infrastructure, utilities and services go hand in hand. Perhaps it’s time for the Goa government to consider whether we need to keep calling more and more tourists to Goa at the cost of the experience of the existing tourists as well as the locals.
Either that or they need to ensure that they have the infrastructure in place before they can call more tourists.
You invite to your party, only those many guests as you have catered to, lest you end up in a situation where neither the host nor the guest is happy.
