Panaji: The recent fires that gutted beach shacks at Arambol and Ashwem have uncovered how beachside hotels are understating their category while registering with the tourism department in order to avoid paying taxes and fees to govt.Tourism minister Rohan Khaunte has directed the tourism department to constitute a team of officers to scour through records and conduct site inspections to find “anomalies” in the registration documents submitted by hotels and private beach shacks.According to Khaunte, the hotel that caught fire on Thursday night at Ashwem was operating as a private beach shack. The seven AC cottages that were destroyed in a fire on April 4 were operating as private beach huts without any registration with the tourism department.“Such issues happen when someone wants to run a business irresponsibly,” said Khaunte.“The hotel that caught fire on Thursday, according to the report I got, is registered under Category C, which is for private beach huts. I have asked for a detailed report and whoever is responsible for giving such permissions. I have asked the director to give a time-bound report.”While Khaunte suggested that the probe is still at the preliminary stage, he did not rule out the possibility of department officials being involved in the deception.“These powers were delegated to the deputy director level, and now, recently, we brought it to the director level because such episodes were happening. Sometimes inspections are not conducted, or, if they are, the report cannot be found, and we then find such violations. We have seen that five-star and four-star hotels that are supposed to be registered under Category A and Category B are actually registered under Category C. There is a question mark on how this happened, and action needs to be taken,” said the minister.The tourism department’s team will check all hotels, private beach shacks, and guest houses that have recently applied for permission or had their permissions renewed.“I have told the department not to give permissions for private shacks unless due diligence is done. If they are doing these types of things or changing categories after we give permissions, then it is a serious issue, and we definitely need to intervene. A private shack is a private shack it cannot be a hotel. And if it is a hotel, then that category has certain conditions. When we give permission for five years and if they change the category, then it is a loss of revenue to the state,” said Khaunte.
