Casinos and “massage parlours” should be out of the State’s tourism lexicon, while drafting the State tourism master plan — the influential church in Goa has demanded.
Addressing a Press conference in Panaji Tuesday, Fr Maverick Fernandes, who heads ‘Caritas’, a charitable church organisation, stressed that they want the locals to benefit from the tourism industry and not just chain starred hotel owners.Releasing an open letter addressed to Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, Fernandes also sought that the entire process be transparent.
The Goa Government has given the task of drawing up a master plan to KPMG advisory services, a private consultant. “They have brought a bad name to the State. What brings a bad name should not be a part of the masterplan. We cannot generate revenue from vices,” he said referring to casinos.
Goa has nearly several onshore casinos located within starred hotels and offshore floating casino vessels, which attract hundreds of thousands of patrons mostly domestic tourists from metropolitan cities every year. They have been blamed for money laundering. Massage parlours mushrooming across the State have also made headlines for the wrong reasons, with many of the premises being raided by the police being liked to prostitution dens.
The tourism master plan which is to chart out a 25-year vision and a tourism framework for Goa is expected to be formulated after “in-depth market survey of current and potential tourists, interactions with international and domestic tour operators, airlines and travel agents, Goa tourism trade interactions and general public interactions”.
The letter drafted by Fernandes is however cynical about the plan and the manner in which the Government is going about it, which he said did not involve people’s participation.“The plan has received the approval of the big business interests who praise the idea knowing fully well that when the business flows in, they can work harder for their masters in Europe who will send travellers to Goa and then make the bucks. In that process, they will do what they have always done- ignore the people of Goa and pocket their share,” Fernandes has said.
Calling the State Government’s agenda to use public-private-partnership method create oceanariums, theme parks, shopping malls, marinas “elitist”, Fernandes said that all this simply meant that “there will soon be the great sale of Goa and the highest bidder will take home the product. Goa would be reduced to a mere commodity and the government would become the auctioneer”.
Fernandes also said that legislators representing the coastal regions of the state, several of whom are Christians, had failed to raise issues related to tourism excesses and about the need to open up the process of the masterplan.The Goa Church and its organisations like Caritas have a considerable sphere of social influence in the coastal state where nearly 26 per cent are Christians.