MAPUSA
The Mapusa Municipal Council (MMC) has doubled the garbage tax from Rs 350 to Rs 720 more than a year back but has miserably failed to provide the basic service of lifting dry waste from public spots.
The town’s latest problem is residents have started burning dry garbage by the roadside which has not been lifted for the last more than three months.
The municipality collection vehicles have failed to do their daily rounds of gathering trash in several wards in the municipal area.
Upset at the civic body’s lackadaisical attitude and the rising mound of waste in their area, residents have begun setting the waste on fire.
“For the last three months, we have been informing the local councillor about the dry waste gathering in our area but all our complaints fell on deaf ears. With people continuing to dump their garden waste by the roadside, the dump was only growing big. So we decided to set the dump on fire,” said a resident of Shettya-vaddo, Mapusa.
The local further disclosed that several other residents in Mapusa have also started burning their dry waste due to the apathy of the civic body.
“It’s sad that people have started setting the garbage dumps on fire. They had no other alternative but to take the drastic step. We as a council have failed in our responsibility to provide this basic facility of garbage collection,” said a councillor from the ruling group, requesting anonymity.
The Chairperson and the Chief Officer have been blaming the scarcity of staff, who were requisitioned for election duty, for the garbage situation going out of hand in Mapusa.
On Friday, Chairperson Shubhangi Vaigankar appeared clueless and expressed helplessness on the situation on the garbage front.
She said that the civic body was spending much of its financial resources on the wages of the municipal staff leaving hardly any funds for civic work.
“Several of our garbage collection trucks are out of order. Some have been sent for repairs but we cannot get them back due to a fund crunch. We have to pay almost Rs 1.30 crore per month on salaries of the staff leaving hardly any funds for municipal work,” Vaigankar said.
