PANAJI
Days ahead of World Tourism Day and on the cusp of the new season, the sector is facing the grim reality of turmoil in yet another area of operations after the taxi imbroglio ” Dudhsagar tours.
Operators who organise the jeep safari to the famous waterfall site have raised a banner of revolt and threatened to break away from the GTDC-controlled online booking system and launch a parallel operation offline.
One collective of the jeep operators ” Collem Jeep Association ” has formally told the government to either give control of the online booking system to them or face a parallel operation with offline bookings from Gandhi Jayanti day (October 2).
The association’s president, Nilesh Velip, has demanded that the agreement they were lured into signing for online booking be scrapped and control of the system be reverted to them.
Another office-bearer of the Association, who is currently out of the country, alleged that the online booking system of the GTDC smacks of a scam which directly affects them, with their members losing business.
The online booking system was previously controlled by the Association before the government coerced them into signing the agreement for a GTDC-controlled online booking system, the office-bearer said.
On several occasions in past years, the feud between the local tour operators and the government authorities had also flared up with the opening of the tourism season and operations at the Dudhsagar waterfall post-monsoon getting delayed.
Meanwhile, a top official of the GTDC, which is incidentally headed by local MLA Ganesh Goankar, said that the corporation is holding discussions with the Association to resolve the logjam.
The Dudhsagar waterfall is a major tourist attraction and draws hundreds of visitors on a daily basis but has often witnessed flare-ups between the government authorities and local tourism entrepreneurs, which include dozens of jeep operators and restaurateurs.
