The Goa Waste Management Corporation's (GWMC) revised Solid Waste Management Policy is a welcome step considering the challenges that the State is currently facing in garbage disposal. Still, the question is whether the policy is good enough to deal with the problem before the State. The revised policy document, which is awaiting government clearance, broadly demarcates four clusters ” Saligao, Bainguinim, Verna and Cacora for effective garbage handling after factoring in the proximity and logistics.
On paper, GWMC has a well-laid-out plan; however, on the ground, the garbage issue is fraught with several inter-connected problems that seemingly throw a spanner in the plan. For example, door-to-door collection is a major aspect of garbage disposal and involves enormous finances. In Margao and Fatorda alone, the civic body is shelling out Rs 5 crore per annum in garbage collection.
Secondly, transportation is another major factor that comes in the way. The question of feasibility comes with the distance between the source village to the garbage treatment plant. The Margao municipality shells out approximately Rs 30,000 per day in transporting its waste to the Saligao plant.
The foremost question is whether distributing the waste of the State across four clusters is the solution to the long-standing problem or whether setting up smaller garbage processing facilities in panchayats or each constituency could be a more realistic solution.
Thirdly, there has been a hue and cry over the Saligao plant accepting waste from Margao. Calangute MLA Michael Lobo has twice mentioned in the ongoing Legislative Assembly that Margao should make its own arrangements and not add to the garbage load the Saligao plant is handling. The cluster system would mean that there would be immense pressure on the designated plants since they would be handling waste across villages and cities. A place like Bainguinim, where there's a lot of opposition over environmental pollution near a site designated as a UNESCO heritage, could face disastrous consequences.
Lastly, the 15-year policy document pales out when two of the plants are in the midst of controversy and facing public opposition. In the current scenario, only Saligao is active, and Cacora is nearing completion. The other two plants may take years to be commissioned, leaving a massive vacuum in the cluster plan.
The cluster-wise demarcation and area-specific allocation are well defined in the plan, with waste-generation figures broken down into biodegradable, non-biodegradable and hazardous. However, the statistics mentioned are as of the current date and may change by the time the plan is launched since the State is witnessing a massive rise in garbage generation. Currently, there is approximately 760 metric tonnes of waste generated daily in Goa. A decade back, the figure was around 400 metric tonnes a day. The garbage figures will continue to grow with the rising number of residents and floating population, and hence variable factors need to be considered.
The bottom line is garbage management is a vast subject that involves money and resources at every stage. Sadly, it is a problem that no government can ignore.
