Goa Forward asks Tourism dept to explain beach cleaning

Goa Forward Party has objected to awarding of a beach cleaning contract to a private agency and asked the Tourism department to come clean on it.
"Tourism Department has not learnt any lessons from the experience of previous beach cleaning contract scam and is once again trying to clean the state coffers with another scam of beach cleaning," Goa Forward spokesman Durgadas Kamat told reporters here.
The department has allotted the tender to Drishti Lifesaving Private Ltd, which is also responsible for providing lifeguards on beaches.
"We demand that Tourism Department should clarify whether any payments will be made to Drishti for doing this work, as Drishti has recently claimed they are doing the work out of love and affection for the beaches of Goa and on verbal request from the state government.

"The department should immediately come clean on whether any commercial terms as well as proper procedure was followed to carry out such work," he said.
When contacted, Drishti Lifesaving Managing Director Ankit Somani said the firm is handling beach cleaning on a temporary basis to support the efforts of state government.

"It's an emergency situation and the government has asked us to step in to resolve the issue of garbage on beaches on a temporary basis. I feel our work over the last few weeks speaks for itself. We have lifted over 1,42,930 kgs of garbage since December 17," he said.

The MD said the litter has been transported to a waste treatment plant at Saligao.
"The same can be verified by receipts from the plant. The same has been achieved with a huge amount of support from various tourism stake[holders across the beaches, specially the beach shacks," Somani said, adding Drishti has over decade-long experience in the domain.
He said they have an existing framework which includes infrastructure and management capability on every beach in the coastal state.