A youth in his twenties seems to be a team leader, standingtall on a heap of plywood on Candolim beach, briefing 200-odd Goan youth, whowill be the crew during the Asia’s biggest musical festival “ Sunburn.
He was sharing his previous experience with the group,explaining how a foreign tourist went naked at the festival after gettingtipsy.
He was explaining what care needs to be taken to handle themind boggling crowd of over one lakh during the three day music festival.
Even before a stage has been set up, the festival is makingwaves online and offline. Tickets too are selling rapidly online.
Unaware about the Tourism Minister’s statement that Sunburnis likely to be shifted to South Goa, workers of Service India are busyclearing wild grass along 80,000 sq mtrs of area earmarked for party creatures,placing tons of plywood, bamboos etc at Candolim beach to meet the December 25deadline, two days prior to the festival.
“We have been told that by December 25, everything should beput in place,” said Govind Boga, a labourer from Jharkhand.
By now the organizers are familiar with the long delay toget all required clearances from various government departments. However, thisgovernment’s decision to give a single window clearance to the event has comeas a huge relief to the organizers.
The single window clearance will be routed through the GoaTourism Development Corporation (GTDC) but the organizers have to get separatepermissions from departments like excise and Income Tax.
“In the past we had to run from pillar to post to getclearances from various departments. Every year the permission came at theeleventh hour,” said Lyndon Alves, local partner of Sunburn.
GTDC’s meeting of December 14 to discuss and deliberate,with heads of various departments and TTAG would be taking a final call ongranting the various clearances to the organisers of Sunburn. The decisionwhether the event stays in North Goa or shifts down South will also be takenhere.
GTDC Director, Nikil Desai informed that a state-levelcommittee comprising of high ranking officials from police, excise, health,tourism and other departments will give their feedback on issuing permissionsto the event.
Though, Sunburn yields a big chunk of revenue to tourism, italso comes with its own set of problems like constant traffic jams, parkingdilemmas and noise pollution.
Locals complain that getting their routine work done. “Wedon’t’ mind if the festival is shifted to South Goa. We don’t get any revenuefrom it and on the contrary we face severe traffic jam that restricts people’smovement,” said Lawrenco Fernandes acting Sarpanch of Candolim VillagePanchayat.
But taxi driver, Shailesh Goltekar from Candolim has noproblem with the traffic jam in the interest of tourism, as traffic snarlscontinue even after Sunburn.
“North Goa traffic will never get better during the periodof Christmas till New Year eve,” acknowledges Alves.
“Just because of traffic jam it doesn’t mean we have to killan event that yields huge revenue. There are alternate ways to deal with it. Wehave hired five private properties for parking,” he added.
It is an admitted fact that drugs happen during thefestival. During the half an hour instructions to the 200-odd crew, the teamleaders explained to them how people bring drugs in their undergarments. Thedeath of a teenaged girl from Bangalore due drug overdose in 2009 is a proof ofthe same.
“We are not authorized to frisk undergarments of people,”Alves said. “In any case the organizers do not sell drugs at the venue and wehave no problem if an anti-narcotic cell is stationed at the venue,” he added.
Anti-Narcotic cell SP, O P Mishra was not willing to commentuntil the hosts got all permission. What he said was that generally they keep awatchful eye on the entire north belt during the festive session.
