MARGAO
Will the Margao Municipality learn a lesson or two from Friday’s fire incident at Sonsodo and work out a mechanism to treat the tonnes of daily waste generated in the commercial capital?
Even as the Friday fire wrought destruction at Sonsodo, causing loss of property running into lakhs of rupees, the City Fathers and Municipal Babus have a task cut out “ how to go about treating the thousands of tonnes of waste that has accumulated inside the Sonsodo waste treatment plant?
Indeed, fire and smoke has become a routine affair inside the Sonsodo waste treatment plant for want of treatment of the daily waste. In the absence of any mechanism in place, the daily waste is stacked inside the treatment plant, leaving the plant in a state of saturation.
While the Friday fire caused loss of Municipal property, including electrical equipment, including a transformer, besides damaging a baling machine and reducing hundreds of waste bins to ashes, the waste treatment plant plays host to fires and smoke, so much so the fire services were forced to direct the Margao Municipality to tone up the fire-fighting logistics at Sonsodo to control the daily fire.
Inquiries have only revealed that Margao Municipal Council’s ambitious plan to set up two 25TPD bio-methanation plants at Sonsodo as a means to treat the daily wet waste has hit the road block. The government-constituted technical panel is yet to give the approval for the technology as a result of which the project hangs in balance.
A senior MMC official said the civic body is waiting for the Election Commission to lift the election code of conduct and a government in place to take the project forward. “Recently, we have received a proposal from a Mangalore-based company to set up plants to treat both the dry and wet waste at Sonsodo. The proposal will be placed before the Council for a decision as and when the meeting is called after the withdrawal of the election code of conduct,” the official said.
Sources told The Goan that over 4,000 tonnes of waste is presently laying stacked inside the Sonsodo waste treatment plant. In 2020, the waste was carted out from the plant during the first Covid wave at the initiative of the Goa Waste Management Corporation. The entire operation had cost a whopping Rs 75-odd lakh.
The plant shed was cleared of the waste and remediated outside to make space for fresh daily waste and its treatment on scientific lines. More than a year and half now, the Sonsodo plant is again saturated, with the MMC again looking out for contractors to cart away the waste that had accumulated inside since mid-2020.
