------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Documented by Goa Desc Resource Centre Ph:2252660 Website: www.goadesc.org Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Press Clippings on the web: http://www.goadesc.org/mem/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------- GOA DESC TOURISM WATCH for World Tourism Day on 27th September News You Can Use --------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------ The No.1 State ---------------------- Things are going terribly wrong in what was adjudged the best State in the country. The State which was declared by India Today as leading the rest of the pack in health infrastructure is in the middle of a jaundice epidemic.
There are no signs of the epidemic abating, with new cases being reported everyday. Worse still, there seems to be an absence of will to take any effective action to address the roots of the problem. Which are acknowledged to be the contamination of water in the state capital and the unhygienic and unsanitary conditions in the eateries including the roadside eateries.
Nobody has yet answered our questions as to why the Neptune hotel which is claimed to be source of the contamination was sealed only on August 4, though the Public Works Department claims that the leak occurred on July 11 and was dealt with on July 12.
The Health Minister, Suresh Amonkar has publicly charged that the Public Works Department failed to inform the Health Services of the contamination even a month after it happened. The Health Services in turn claim that they did not realise that jaundice had touched epidemic proportions, because private doctors and nursing homes failed to notify the steep increase in the incidence of cases to the epidemiological officer.
A doctor in a private nursing home on the other hand complained that in the past when notifiable diseases were intimated to the Health Services, they did not even acknowledge the communication leave alone take any action.
Though the Food and Drugs Administration and civic officials are expected to routinely check the levels of sanitation in eateries, a restaurant owner told us that inspection was never carried out in all the 17 years the restaurant was functioning till the recent jaundice epidemic.
Even after every one went into a frenzy after the fact of the epidemic was recognised and became public and the Chief Minister cracked the whip, nobody knows at least officially which restaurants were contaminated.
This is because obviously under political pressure, the core group and all the concerned authorities kept the names of the tainted parties a secret. Even as of now, we do not know which of them have cleaned up their act and which failed to pass the sanitary test.
At the peak of the jaundice epidemic, the Chief Minister declared that the jaundice epidemic was perhaps a blessing in disguise. Because it offered opportunities to set in place systems to ensure sanitary standards not only in Panjim but the whole of Goa.
But it is clear that there is a lack of political will to do anything about it.
Instead, there are indications that councilors in Mapusa, for instance,
are selectively targeting eateries to settle political scores.
In the commercial capital, Margao, the powerful and politically influential organised restaurant lobby is using the issue to settle their scores with the gaddos who have been literally eating into their business.
After a lot of bumbling and fumbling, the Public Works Department sent samples of water to Chennai for virological tests. It is not known whether the results have come or if the Public Works Department is keeping them top secret because they reinforce the suspicion that the pipelines themselves may be contaminated.
In Panjim, it has been discovered that the alternate source of water to the restaurants the wells have also been contaminated. The Chief Minister had told us that he had asked the Development Commissioner and the then acting chief secretary, Vijay Madan to get to the bottom of it all in forty-eight hours. A fortnight later the Development Commissioner Vijay Madan is yet to establish what exactly happened and who should be held accountable.
The buck passing that we witness epitomises the total lack of co-ordination. Though the Public Works Department has been in the eye of the storm, there has not been a single statement from the Minister in charge Sudhin Dhavlikar. Instead his confidantes have been going about claiming that he is a victim of a political conspiracy.
The India Today survey ranked Goa at the top in regard to educational facilities. But here also there seems to be something terribly wrong. It has been admitted that the drop out rates are very high. It has been acknowledged that the levels of maths teaching are abysmal. It is also clear that there is a mismatch between the courses offered and the requirement of the market.
With great pride the government announced that the intake capacity for information technology has been augmented in anticipation of Goa becoming the new Silicon Valley. The revolution failed to materialise and the IT education bubble burst. As dramatised by the fact that there are no takers for the seats in the IT stream in the engineering college. And apparently there is a glut of civil engineers and diploma holders also.
The roads including the Verna bypass are proving to be killing fields. Attention to this has been tragically drawn by the death of an entire family in a road collision.
The government has publicly acknowledged that our beach safety infrastructure is inadequate in loud hysterical advertisements warning tourists that they should not venture into the sea during the monsoons. This presupposes that tourists read local newspaper when they are on a holiday. The fact is that in the absence of any lifeguards or tourist police to physically prevent them from committing suicide, tourists continue to risk their lives.
A seventeen-year-old would have died in the sea of Baga last Friday but for the efforts of a long time foreign resident who risked his own life to save her.
Yet another tourism season is fast approaching and nothing has been done to crack down on the private tourist taxi mafia in the South. The tent makers and hirers from all over the country who had a convention in south Goa complained bitterly of how they were fleeced by the private tourist taxi drivers. They were apparently charged Rs 300 and 400 for a distance of eight to ten kilometers.
Are they still any takers for the claim that Goa is the number one State in the country? ----------------------------------------------- Editorial in HERALD 10/9/03 page 6 ----------------------------------------------
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