MAPUSA
With daily wage labourers doing a vanishing act, door-to-door garbage collection has hit a speed bump in Mapusa.
Several residents blamed civic authorities for failing to do their job effectively as garbage was not lifted from their homes for the last couple of days.
Ward councillors also faced the heat as locals started blaming them for failure to get their act together.
“For the last three days, no one has come to collect waste in our area. We can store dry waste for some days in a corner but we can’t do the same for wet waste. Since we are paying our taxes regularly we expect the civic body to do its duty properly,” said an exasperated citizen from Carrasvaddo, Mapusa.
For the record, the Mapusa Municipal Council (MMC) has engaged the service of around 65 labourers on daily wages to collect door-to-door waste from all 20 wards in Mapusa.
Interestingly, only 40-45 labourers report to work on a day, putting pressure on the limited workforce.
The supervisors have no alternative but to swap workers from other wards to manage the situation but these “new” labourers fail to collect waste from several households.
Sources informed that two hydraulic trucks used to collect waste have suffered a breakdown and further compounded the problem.
Ward 5 Councillor Shashank Narvekar admitted that there was indeed a disruption in the door-to-door waste collection last week.
He said for two days on the trot garbage was not lifted in his ward inconveniencing the residents in the area.
“One of my ward constituents called up and blamed me for the lack of service. I had no option but to go to her place, collect the waste and store it in my compound,” Narvekar confessed.
“I don’t blame the people. We and the entire council have to take the blame for failing to provide proper service. When people are faithfully paying the tax, why should they suffer,” he said.
Ward 13 Councilor Kamal D’Souza also confirmed that there was a problem with waste collection in the last few days and said he would take up the issue of waste collection at the next council meeting.
A former BJP councillor admitted receiving several calls from residents on the absence of garbage collectors for two days.
“We have enough workers, but somewhere somebody has failed to get things organised. Those in power have to focus on their job and get it all organised,” he said, requesting anonymity.
Incidentally, the MMC had a couple of months ago increased the garbage tax by 100 per cent from Rs 365 to Rs 700.
