MAPUSA:
With Chaturthi festival fast-approaching, the Mapusa civic body is found struggling to tackle the growing garbage collection in town. The twin problems of lack of labor and inadequate infrastructure to collect waste are staring the Mapusa Municipal Council in the face.
While the door-to-door garbage collection has received mixed response with some areas reporting smooth collection, there were complaints from many councillors and ex-councillors that the system was very erratic in their areas.
“Door-to-door garbage collection is in a complete mess in Ward 7. In some areas, the garbage collectors come on alternate days while the collection is not done properly. When the civic body is collecting so much tax from the public, it is expected to at least give basic service to the people,” said Franky Carvalho, ex-councillor of the ward. Incidentally, Carvalho is also the vice-president of the BJP North Goa District Committee.
However, councillor Shashank Narvekar gave a thumbs up to door-to-door waste collection in his ward but slammed the council for not lifting garbage from various black spots in the ward.
“We can see mounds of garbage and garden waste dumped at many open places, which are not lifted for days together,” Narvekar said.
Sources informed that the civic body does not have enough trucks to collect the garbage dumped in open places.
“Two trucks have been lying in the garage for the last several months while a compactor is also not in working condition,” a councillor informed on condition of anonymity. The civic body does not even have basic gadgets such as weed cutters.
Sources said that the municipal council has only four weed cutters which are used to service 20 wards of Mapusa.
“During our time, we had 16 weed cutters which were supplied to all the wards. The situation now is so pathetic that we have to hire private weed cutters,” another former councillor told The Goan.
The MMC is also saddled with another huge problem vis-Ã -vis the availability of labor as during the Chaturthi several civic workers go on leave.
MMC vice-chairperson Viraj Phadke informed that the municipality has prepared a list of workers who will be going on leave for the festival.
