Tourism department is rightfully taking up its responsibility. Parulekar’s incompetency had resulted in GTDC taking over matters and areas that were not their areas of competency. Cabral needs to run what he has efficiently rather then dip his fingers in too many pies .
http://englishnews.thegoan.net/story.php?id=33971
Insisting that this decision was taken with his approval and in the interest of GTDC, Cabral said the Corporation was unable to cope with the workload and with the staff shortage.
The cabinet’s decision on Wednesday to remove promotion and marketing services from GTDC, which is headed by Curchorem’s BJP MLA Cabral and to hand them to the Tourism Department, headed by Pernem’s MGP MLA and Tourism Minister Babu Ajgaonkar, had fuelled speculation that it had to do with the compulsions of coalition politics.
Rejecting claims that he may have been unhappy about this decision, Cabral said: “The decision to make the changes and give added powers to the tourism department was the cabinet’s decision and I fully support this decision.”
He also dismissed the notion that the cabinet decision would dilute GTDC and give more authority and influence to the tourism department in particular, and the MGP in general.
“The decision to make some changes in the role of GTDC was done by Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, Tourism Minister Babu Azgaonkar and others in my presence at a meeting.”
“The simple reason was that there was too much of workload at the GTDC and there was shortage of staff in the corporation. This compelled us to seek these changes with the State government.”
“There was no party politics involved in this issue and it was done merely facilitate the workload,” clarified Cabral.
Asked what would be the GTDC’s role in this new decision, Cabral replied: “The GTDC will continue the same work it used to do before, like promotion of tourism of Goa, development of Goa’s tourism infrastructure, etc. However, a chunk of the workload will now be handled by the tourism department.”
It may be recalled that the cabinet on Wednesday approved a decision to split responsibilities and more importantly spending, between the Goa Tourism Development Corporation and the Tourism Department.
The Tourism Department will now directly handle all issues and expenditure relating to promotion, marketing and advertising of Goa as a tourism destination which includes promotional tours and roadshows, while the GTDC will get to hold charge of tourism infrastructure development.
Confirming this, Tourism Minister Manohar ‘Babu’ Ajgaonkar said that the move was to make things “like before”.
“It has been reverted back to how it was earlier. All promotion, marketing and advertising related activities will been handled by the Tourism Department. GTDC has been given charge of infrastructure,” he said.
The GTDC was handed over the promotion and marketing back in 2010, believed to be by the then Chief Minister Digambar Kamat.
