the goan I network
MARGAO
The Margao city fathers have finally submitted data of household and business establishments located in their respective wards, facilitating the civic body to compile a huge list of requirements to take the waste segregation at source exercise to its logical conclusion.
Margao Municipal Council Chairperson Babita Prabhudesai told The Goan that she spent the entire Wednesday afternoon in the civic body to ensure that all the councillors submit their data so that the administration can kick start the exercise of compiling the data and forward a detailed list of requirements to the office of the Director of Municipal Administration (DMA).
She pointed out that though there was some delay on the part of the city fathers to submit their data, the administration has managed to compile the data within a short time and forward the requirements to the government. “We have set January 31 as the deadline to kick start a concerted drive to collect segregated waste at source from all the households and commercial establishments. We don’t expect things to change overnight, but the civic body will be certainly setting in motion the process to go for collection of segregated waste,” the Chairperson said.
Realising that the civic body is facing an uphill task to get the thousands of households hand over the waste in segregated form, the MMC Chairperson said the exercise will be backed by a propaganda and awareness programme across the city to persuade the citizens to hand over waste only in segregated form. “We understand the challenge before the civic body, but we are gearing up to address the issues. Our engineers have prepared an action plan to go to the people’s doorsteps with banners, advertisements and appeals with a humble plea to cooperate with the civic body and help in collecting waste only in segregated form,” she added.
Given that the thousands of bins distributed by the civic body to the households are not being used by the citizens for the collection of waste, the municipality has drawn up a plan to request the government to provide around 40,000 new bins for distribution to each and every household located in the city.
With just a week to go for the January 31 deadline to end, the Margao Municipality expects to launch the concerted exercise in the commercial capital early February, even as the civic body is expecting the government to support in terms of logistics and finance.
MMC toying up with ‘sentinel’ idea to rein in on those dumping garbage
MARGAO: The Margao Municipal Council is toying up with the idea of tying up with the police to rein in on those dumping waste in the city on the lines of the traffic sentinel scheme.
The civic body has plans to reward citizens if they catch miscreants on videos dumping waste at unauthorized places. While the municipality plans to levy a fine of Rs 5000 on the violators, the sentinel will be rewarded Rs 500 by the civic body.
MMC Chief Officer Siddhivinayak Naik informed that the civic body has already written to the police for a tie up on the lines of the traffic sentinel scheme. He said the proposal will be placed before the council if it finds favour with the police.
