Recent fires gutted several shacks at Ashwem and Arambol beaches. Reportedly, these hotels were registered as “shacks” with the Goa Tourism Development Corporation (GTDC) so to avoid paying the applicable taxes and fees to the govt. The tourism minister stated that there are cases of 5-star and 4-star hotels that are registered under Category C instead of categories A and B, respectively. He was surprised as to how this happened. To identify such anomalies, now he has directed the GTDC officers to go through all the records and conduct site inspections. Are these not prerequisites prior to granting permissions and approvals “ whether for shacks, guest houses or hotels? Employed in the GTDC, the officers need to travel and tour around tourism places for which they will be provided official air-conditioned vehicles and other perks. Ground-truthing and fact-checking of the type of tourism-related establishments are necessary which cannot be done from the comforts of air-conditioned rooms. The GTDC needs to be proactive and not react after major incidents occur.
