MARGAO
Come Tuesday and the Margao Municipal Council will once again embark on an exercise, which it had started a little over two decades ago, to shortlist an agency capable of resolving the Sonsodo imbroglio.
Around 22 years after the MMC had first inked an agreement with Pune-based Ms Komex India Ltd to handle solid waste at Sonsodo, the civic body will take a call whether bio-methanation plants will be an answer to the festering garbage issue plaguing the commercial capital.
Over the last two decades, several companies had descended on Sonsodo to offer a solution to the imbroglio, starting with Ms Komex India to Goa Foundation, Ms Hyquip Projects to Fomento. And, not to mention Goa Waste Management Corporation, which has been closely monitoring the ongoing waste treatment work at the site after the exit of Fomento around seven months ago.
That the Sonsodo waste dumping site plays host to two sheds, one shed erected by Ms Komex, which is now partly buried at the legacy dump and the 10-year-old shed left behind by Fomento and which is put to use to treat the daily wet waste, indicates that the attempts to resolve the waste management crisis has not borne fruit.
When the city fathers will meet in the council hall on Tuesday morning to discuss the Goa Waste Management Corporation’s action plan on setting up of seven bio-methanation plants at Sonsodo, civic officials in the know recall that their predecessors had held similar meetings since the late 90s till around 2010 to discuss and finalize private players in a bid to resolve the garbage crisis.
At hand is a proposal before the civic body to set up seven bio-methanation modular plants -- three plants in phase I and four in phase II. The proposal will be deliberated at the Tuesday meeting. The proposal assumes further significance as the MMC would be required to fund the project, which is expected to run into crores ( around Rs 20-30 crore).
The bio-methanation plants were mooted by Waste Management Minister Michael Lobo during his visit to Sonsodo last month on the plea that it may take minimum four months for the state-of-the-art waste management plant to take shape at the Verna Industrial Estate.
Questions are being asked in the corridors of MMC whether it is worth going in for the bio-methanation plants at a huge cost as a stop-gap arrangement till the government plant at Verna takes shape in five years.
