the goan I network
PANAJI
Waste Management Minister Michael Lobo is currently on a five-day visit to Oslo, Norway, along with a team ostensibly to study waste management methods in Norway and Sweden. Ironically, Oslo is lauding India for its waste management solutions.
Even as Lobo, Waste Management Corporation MD Levinson Martins, Goa State Pollution Control Board (GSPCB) environment engineer Sanjeev Joglekar are busy signing an MoU with Norwegian company SINTEF for a waste-to-energy plant, Norwegian Minister of Trade and Industry, Torbjørn Røe, awarded Bangalore’s 24-year-old Nivedha RM earlier this month for coming up with an identical waste management solution.
Nivedha made history on October 10 for being the first Indian to be awarded with the “Impact Makers Award” 2019, a global competition which saw 35 entrepreneurs from around the world shortlisted including from countries like the UK, USA, Kenya, and Botswana.
She was awarded Rs 40 lakh by the Norway-based group Xynteo, for her “trashbot”, a garbage processing machine which can deal with unsegregated waste of 500 kg, 2 tonnes, 5 tonnes and 10 tonnes on a daily basis.
Meanwhile, Lobo is reported to have told reporters of some Goan publications, who are with him in Oslo, that Goa needs technologies from Oslo to deal with Goa’s wet waste, plastic and construction waste. SINTEF is reportedly going to be a consultant and provide technology to the Goa government which will then identify land for these plants.
Environmentalist Claude Alvares from the NGO Goa Foundation was quick to point out the irony in a post on social media that went viral over Tuesday and Wednesday. “This (Nivedha’s) is a product of our very own flesh
and blood, made in India, but in Goa, three of our decision-making people from the BJP government of Goa, are flying to Sweden this week to negotiate an expensive new plant for the garbage dump at Sonsodo in Margao. It is a tragedy that those involved in deciding on garbage plants do not handle garbage themselves. The officials know about (Nivedha’s) Trashbot, but want a project costing lakhs and crores,” Alvares’ viral post stated.
Alvares also went on to slam former Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar for the failure of Saligao garbage treatment plant on which the Goa government spent crores of rupees.
“The last experimental (and very very expensive) joke in this connection, for which we are all now paying heavily, is the late Parrikar’s decision to spend Rs146 crore on the Saligao garbage plant whose parts came from seven foreign countries, including Germany. This was supposed to be a state-of-the-art plant doing only unsegregated waste, with 22 waste fractions. Today, the plant is demanding segregated waste to function! And worse, a large number of tankers take the effluent of this plant and dump it in the Tonca sewage plant at Panaji! So here is a new variant which only our politicians are capable of inventing: one waste management plant generates waste for another! Wow!” the post continued.
Meanwhile, he pointed out that Nivedha’s Trashbots have been installed at Mundra Port, and will soon be installed at the Chennai Airport.
Doubtless, Goans will await the results of Lobo’s Oslo technology plants with bated breath.
