Goa Minister calls proposal for having bar owners arrange dropping customers home 'unrealistic'

Goa Agriculture Minister Ravi Naik, on Friday, outrightly called it unrealistic—the state transport ministry’s recent proposal to make it mandatory for bar and restaurant owners to ensure their drunk customers are dropped home in taxis.

Naik, a former chief minister, said that while Goans can “handle” their drinks, it would be unviable to expect tourists from Maharashtra and Karnataka to hire the exorbitantly priced taxi services in Goa, after a tipple.

“Goans drink alcohol, but they do not fall over, neither do they sway. You understand, right? There is no problem,” Naik told reporters in Panaji on Friday, after attending a meeting of top Bharatiya Janata Party leaders—MLAs, ministers and office bearers—chaired by the party’s national general secretary in-charge of Goa, C T Ravi.

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“Taxi? Bar owners will suffer. There are many tourists who come (to Goa) from Karnataka, Maharashtra. They sit to drink and get drunk. They drink (alcohol) worth Rs 5 or Rs 10 or Rs 100. Will they hire a taxi by paying Rs 1,000?” Naik said about transport minister Mauvin Godinho’s proposal to put the onus on bar and restaurant owners to facilitate taxi service for their inebriated patrons.

Godinho had announced on Monday that the state transport ministry was working on a mechanism which would mandate it for bar and restaurant owners to ensure that their patrons reach safely home in a cab, not their own vehicles. The minister had said the proposal was drafted due to the drunk driving that caused road accidents in the coastal state, which sees millions of tourist arrivals every year.

The All Goa Bar and Restaurant Owners Association had also opposed the ministry’s proposal, saying it was “feasible”. The panel had claimed poor road conditions and not drunken driving was the cause for most accidents reported in the state.