PANAJI
Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar was cornered by Opposition MLAs, especially Rohan Khaunte, over the expenditure incurred by the tourism department on beach cleaning.
Speaking during Question Hour, Khaunte demanded answers from Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar on payments made to the contractor whose work, he alleged, wasn’t up to the mark.
In his reply, Parulekar said the government had spent around ₹4 crore each in North and South Goa totalling around ₹8.2 crore between September 2014 and July 2015 while bills to the tune of ₹1.34 crore till November 2015 were pending.
“At this rate we will be spending ₹75 crore over five years if this is not stopped,” Khaunte said, adding that the minister failed to respond to his questions over the quality of the work. He hinted that former Tourism Director Ameya Abhyankar was transferred from the department because of the beach cleaning ‘scam.’
Later speaking to media, Khaunte said that the beach cleaning contractors had not even installed bins on the beaches, yet they were being paid hefty amounts.
“The total contract period is for five years to be renewed after 15 months if the State Level Monitoring Committee is satisfied with the work of the contractors. The first 15 months of the contract has ended on 07/12/2015. The Government will take a decision on extending the contract only on the recommendation of the State Level Monitoring Committee,” Parulekar said in response.
He informed deductions in bills are effected against shortfall of any services and penalties are imposed for non-maintenance, non-disposal and non-deployment of labourers based on the reports submitted by the officials of the department.
The Opposition, including Leader of Opposition Pratapsingh Rane, demanded that there be a half an hour discussion on the issue.
Former RDA Minister Mickky Pacheco also accused the tourism minister of providing him inaccurate information.
Pacheco had sought information on the number of tourists that Dabolim airport catered to each tourist season. In response, Parulekar answered saying that there were 45,14,278 tourists who arrived via the airport between April 2014 and March 2015 and 31,20,652 tourists between April 2015 and November 2015.
Pacheco then derided the minister for attempting to include local Goans who travel in the number of tourists in a bid to pump up his tourism figures. “Is he trying to pass off local Goans as tourists and fool us?” Pacheco questioned.
Parulekar said he estimated that only 10 per cent of the travellers who used the airport were local Goans and that the rest were tourists.
Protem speaker Mauvin Godinho suggested that the Tourism Department put up a mechanism to effectively count the exact number of tourists coming in.
“There is no point arguing. If the systems are not in place, you can assure the House that they will be put in place,” Godinho said from the Speaker’s chair.
