Tourism sector lauds Goa government for averting 'big disaster'

Goa's travel and tourism industry stakeholders on Monday said that a "big disaster" had been averted, thanks to the Goa government's handling of an ecological crisis which emerged off the state's coastline in the form of a drifting naphtha-ferrying tanker, which has now run aground off the Panaji shore.

"I actually think they handled the situation pretty well. Things could have been much worse. The Goa government's hands were tied. It was the Customs department which didn't allow the naphtha to be unloaded from the ship," Travel and Tourism Association of Goa president Savio Messias told reporters here.

"Since then, the government has got moving. I think things have stabilised now and we are convinced that it will not be as big a disaster as we feared," said Messias, whose association serves as a pressure group of stakeholders linked to the travel and tourism industry.

With Goa's tourism season underway in October, industry stakeholders were especially concerned about the potential ecological threat, which the tanker and its contents could represent to the state's fragile coastline, which accounts for the bulk of the tourist footfalls in the state.

After getting caught in a storm last week, the unmanned tanker Nu Shi Nalini carrying 2,500 tons of naphtha -- an inflammable gas -- and large amounts of oil and diesel, drifted perilously close to the Panaji shoreline, before finally running itself aground on a rocky shelf around 2 nautical miles from the coast on Saturday.

The unmanned tanker was anchored five nautical miles off Goa on the directions of the Goa-based Mormugao Port Trust (MPT) and customs officials, before the vessel first started drifting towards the shore of the state capital due to strong winds and rough seas, last Thursday.

Chief Minister Pramod Sawant has already ordered a magisterial enquiry into the incident and said that the role of the MPT officials, the ship's captain and the owner would also be probed for creating a potentially ecological scare off Goa.

A multi-agency operation is currently underway involving security agencies like the Indian Navy and Indian Coast Guard and other maritime agencies, which involves transferring of the cargo to another tanker. According to Sawant, the operation is expected to last through the week.IANS