MARGAO
The Margao Municipal Council seems to be leaving no stone unturned to make the Shigmo float parade during the weekend a great success. A makeshift seating stand is being erected at the Municipal square for the benefit of the public to witness the floats passing past the Municipal building.
President of the Margao Shigmotsav Samiti, BJP MLA Digambar Kamat, who is presently on a vacation in the United Kingdom, is also expected to return home ahead of the Shigmo parade scheduled in the city on Saturday.
Post-Shigmotsav celebrations, however, the Margao Municipal Council and the civic administration have a task cut out on the garbage management front -- since the civic body has just 20 days at its disposal to compile and file a compliance report in the High Court on April 10 how it intends to manage the day-to-day handling of the waste generated in the commercial capital.
In fact, the Margao Municipal Council has finally come under the High Court lens over its abject failure to handle the day-to-day waste generated in its jurisdiction. Perhaps for the first time in recent years, the High Court has point blank reminded the civic body that in terms of the statutory duties imposed upon the Margao Municipal Council, the Council is required to take effective steps for handling and managing day-to-day solid waste generated in the city.
That’s not all. The High Court bench comprising of Justice Valmiki SA Menezes and Justice M S Sonak has sounded categorical in asserting, “If there is laxity on these issues, the same would prima facie amount to the dereliction of statutory duties”.
The Court added: “Therefore, we once again direct the MMC to ensure that necessary steps are taken for handling and managing of day-to-day solid waste that is generated within its jurisdiction. The Chief Officer of MMC should file a compliance report by the next date. A copy of such a compliance report should be furnished to the GWMC for verification”.
Against the backdrop of the latest High Court order, questions are being raised in the corridors of the civic body and outside on the options available with the MMC to resolve the Sonsodo imbroglio. For, it’s now three years since the Margao Municipality had taken over the Sonsodo waste Management shed from Fomento Green, but has till date failed to treat even a single tonne of wet waste at the treatment plant.
What the civic body had been doing with impunity in the last three years at Sonsodo is to simply dump the daily wet waste inside the imposing waste management shed with no waste management system worth its name in place at the site.
During these three years, piled up waste had been carted out and remediated twice by spending crores of rupees. The waste management shed has played host to fires and smoke the last in two years due to the formation of methane gas inside for want of treatment of the daily wet waste. The walls of the mega shed had twice crumbled last year as it could not bear the weight of the piled up waste.
A MMC official told The Goan that what the High Court has asked the civic body is to file a road map on how it intends to go about resolving the day-to-day handing of the garbage. “it’s now almost 11 months since Waste Management Minister Atanasio Monserrate had unveiled a road map for Sonsodo in April last year. Sadly, the road map has hit a road block for want of action on the ground last year”, the official said.
