Vendors selling eatables, touts, unruly watersports operators, masseurs, hawkers are back into action at the beaches after India reserve battalion (IRB) personnel posted in the coastal belt have been pulled out for election duty. After the increased presence of IRB personnel this season, the beaches were freed from masseurs, vendors and hawkers who had ruled beaches as their own " free trade zone".
But with IRB personnel sent for election duty, lawlessness reigns supreme now as per a TOI report. The scenes on the North Goa beach belt; Sinquerim, Baga, Calangute and Candolim; considered to be most crowded beaches, is chaotic. The tourism department, last season, had banned drinking of alcohol at beaches. The ban proved quite successful with IRB personnel keeping a strict vigil.
Speaking to TOI, John Lobo, Baga-Calangute-based secretary of Shack Owners Welfare Society, said, "There is nobody to prevent the nuisance created by unruly and drunk tourists, and there are hundreds of vendors having a field day on the beaches." Large groups of tourists are buying liquor and beer from wholesale outlets and sitting on the beach and drinking, and then discarding the bottles on the beach, littering the beach and also causing safety hazards because of the broken bottles.
"Apart from the vendors, foreign tourists are also being harassed by drunk domestic tourists. This is not a good thing because it spoils Goa's image and drives away quality tourists," Lobo said.
He said the government should not have withdrawn the IRB personnel as it sends the wrong signal that the government is not interested in the safety of tourists on the beach, and said the situation needs to be remedied immediately.
A lifeguard at Calangute beach said the absence of IRB has proved a boon to vendors and hawkers. At Calangute beach, he said, everyday they see 50-100 hawkers and vendors walking up and down the beach doing business.
"There was so much control when the IRB men were posted here and nuisance of vendors was stopped," he said.
The absence of IRB personnel has benefitted otherwise unruly water sports operators- they are free to flaunt the queue system and charge as per their whims and fancies. Three tourist girls at Calangute beach on Friday evening were seen chasing a tout, who, they claimed, had cheated them. The girls wanted their 2,000 back, that they had paid to the water sports operator, supposedly a tout for water skiing.
The girls wanted to lodge a police complaint but did not know the name of the tout nor the watersports operator for whom he worked. Their inquiries at the beach yielded no result and they left disappointed, angry and feeling cheated.
Though watersports operators are required to follow a queue system, the kiosk erected in the middle of the Calangute beach has nobody on the counter. Touts conducted business apparently charging exorbitant rates to tourists.
It's not that the tourism department is not aware of the problem. "We know that they have descended in hordes. With election being a priority, we had no option but to let IRB personnel go," a senior official at the tourism department said, while acknowledging the problem.
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