Goa beach village wants ban on glass bottles

Panaji, May 20:

The sarpanch of a coastal village in Goa wants a ban on the use of glass bottles on the beaches as strewn broken bottles are causing a menace.

Speaking to IANS on Wednesday, Bogmalo village sarpanch Laxman Kavlekar said: “In recent times, there has been a rise in the number of instances of visitors cutting their feet on jagged glass ends, usually broken remains of bottles of beer or aerated drinks.”

Bogmalo is 35 km away from Panaji.

“We get around 800 visitors to the beach everyday including tourists and locals. Over the last few weeks, we have been getting more and more complaints about feet-cuts due to broken glass in the beach sand,” Kavlekar said.

Recently, Goa and its beaches have come under scanner for its inability to deal with garbage.

Garbage strewn in public places, including beaches, has been one of the consistent grumbles of the tourism and travel industry stakeholders over the last few years.

Kavlekar now says that he has written to the Tourism Department to ban glass bottles on beaches, so that visitors could have an injury-free stroll on Bogmalo beach.

“We want the ban imposed by the Tourism department so that there is some law we as a panchayat can use to impose a penalty on violators who litter our beach with glass. Sometimes, it is broken beer bottles, other times it is cold drink bottles,” Kavlekar said.

Goa had banned consumption of liquor in public places last year due to increasing instances of drunken hooliganism.

Goa is one of the best known beach tourism destinations in the country and attracts over three million tourists every year. (IANS)