■ MARGAO COUNCIL LAGGED IN FULFILLING BASIC FUNCTION OF WASTE MANAGEMENT ■ GWMC TO REMEDIATE 14K TONNES OF WASTE
MARGAO
What and who has failed Sonsodo, so much so that the A-Class 25-member Margao Municipal Council, with an army of engineers and workers at its disposal, and no dearth of funds under the Finance Commission, is bracing up to hand over its solid waste management to the Goa Waste Management Corporation?
For an insight into the question, consider this: The ongoing remediation work of the Sonsodo legacy dump currently underway at the waste dumping site is carried out by the GWMC after the MMC miserably failed to handle the dump over the years.
That’s not all. The Margao municipality is now bracing up to hand over the day-to-day treatment of the waste to the GWMC when managing solid waste is the prime responsibility of a local body. In this respect, the civic body is again bracing up to authorize the GWMC to set up the two 25TPD bio-digesters at Sonsodo to handle the daily waste.
That’s not all. The civic body has authorized the GWMC to cart out and remediate the 14,000 tonnes of piled up waste inside the Sonsodo waste treatment plant. Attribute it to political goodwill, the GWMC is expected to foot the whopping bill of Rs 3.23 crore to execute this operation.
Again consider this. The MMC has knocked on the doors of the GWMC seeking permission to send 10 tonnes of daily dry waste to the Corporation’s Saligao plant. Reason: The civic body is still struggling to put the power transformer and electric equipment in place at Sonsodo after a massive fire around two months ago.
And, now if sources are to be believed, the Margao Municipality is toying with the idea of handing over to the GWMC the task of floating Expression of Interest (EOI) to rope in a contractor to treat the daily waste, pending the setting up and commissioning of the proposed two 25TPD bio-digesters at Sonsodo.
That’s not all. MMC has set in motion the process to outsource door-to-door waste collection to a private contractor by spending crores of rupees annually, in what can be termed as A-Class municipality’s failure to take the solid waste management to its logical conclusion despite an army of workers and no dearth of funds.
Remarked a senior government official: “Handing over the responsibility of waste management to the GWMC does not augur well for an A-Class civic body, which has technical people such as engineers, a full-fledged sanitary section and an army of workers. The MMC is flushed with funds under the 14th & 15 Finance Commissions. This only brings to the fore the point whether there’s no will on the part of the civic officials to execute a basic function of waste management.”
The officer added: “The goodwill and the bonhomie between the Waste Management Minister Atanasio Monserrate and the powers that be from Fatorda seem to have paved the way for GWMC’s intervention at Sonsodo. What about the dozens of panchayat bodies, which are struggling to manage their waste and have come under the court scanner? Will Monserrate and the GWMC also intervene and help these grassroots bodies?
