MARGAO
Even as the Margao Municipal Council on Tuesday filed a status report on the situation at Sonsodo before the High Court, the civic body has a task at hand “ how the Municipality intends to handle the 10,000 metric tons of piled up waste lying inside the Sonsodo waste management shed.
This question came up before the High Court when the matter came up for hearing on Tuesday, with the Court seeking clarity on how the MMC and the authorities intend to address the issue of the piled up waste lying inside the shed.
Sources in the know informed that the MMC is believed to have submitted to the High Court that the civic body had written a letter to the Goa Waste Management Corporation (GWMC) to take up the work of remediation of piled up matured waste.
In fact, the MMC is believed to have pointed out that the civic body is willing to rope in the GWMC to take up the work of remediation of the piled up waste as a depository work. The civic body, however, is believed to have further pointed out that work on the remediation of the piled up waste can only be taken up for execution after the monsoon.
With the Court seeking an action plan how the authorities intends to go about handling the piled up waste, it is learnt that the GWMC on Tuesday evening sent a letter to the Margao Municipal Council containing a proposal that it may cost Rs two crore to remediate the piled up waste.
Sources said the GWMC is expected to submit the letter to the High Court at the next date of hearing on the remediation of the piled up waste, based on which the Court is expected to issue directions to complete the work within a time frame.
Around 10,000 metric tonnes of matured waste has piled up inside the Sonsodo waste management shed, believed to be the cause behind the recurring fires and smoke due to the generation of methane gas.
While the MMC had initially planned to take up the remediation work of the piled up waste at a cost of Rs 2.2 crore, the civic body, however, could not get the go-ahead signal from the Goa State Urban Development Agency (GSUDA) in the form of administrative approval.
MMC’s plan to work up the remediation work departmentally had raised many an eyebrow in the corridors of the civic body and outside, more so when the Goa Waste Management Corporation had earned appreciation for completing the remediation of the Sonsodo legacy dump within the time frame under High Court monitoring.
A question still remains unanswered why the MMC did not rope in the GWMC to execute the work of remediation of the piled up waste when the GWMC had in the year 2020 remediated the waste piled up inside the plant at an estimated cost of Rs 85 lakh.
