Panaji: Goa tourism department has moved to disconnect water and electricity connection of more than 300 hotels in the state for not registering with them, despite repeated notices.
State Tourism Minister Rohan Khaunte told the monsoon session of Goa legislative assembly that 188 hotels from North Goa and 113 from South have not registered with the department, despite repeated notice.
He said that the tourism department has moved to disconnect the water and electricity connection of these hotels as a penalty for not adhering to the notices.
Khaunte was responding to the question tabled by AAP MLA Cruz Silva on the floor of the House.
The minister also said that the Online Travel Agents (OTAs) have also been issued notices for not registering with the department.
He said that the five OTAs have registered with the department, while rest have not. Khaunte said that the action would be taken against these OTAs and also those hotels which are empanelled with them.
During the Question Hour, AAP MLA Cruz Silva questioned why the report prepared by a consultant firm KPMG was not implemented by the tourism department. He pointed out that the report has claimed that 59 per cent of the hotels in the state are unregistered.
Responding to the question, Khaunte said that the KPMG report was considered as a referral by the department, which has already started working in that direction during last one and half years.
He said that the department has started cracking down on the illegalities and also has undertaken measures for East of Doing Business.
Khaunte said that the online platform was introduced for the hotels to register with the department and also the number od documents that are required for the registration were reduced drastically.
After simplifying the procedure, the number of renewals of the hotels has increased by 146 per cent and new registrations by 1077 per cent, he said adding that the department collected Rs 82 lakhs only in the form of registration fees during last one year.
Goa Forward party MLA Vijai Sardesai questioned the loss of business as estimated in the KPMG report. The minister said that the loss cannot be estimated but the department has now introduced TIME software in various hotels which helps to get the data about the inflow of tourists, time spent by them in Goa and also their nationalities.
Khaunte also said that the department has issued notice to KPMG to provide the supporting data, which was used to come out with the report on tourism in Goa.
