MARGAO
Around60-70 Covid patients in the jurisdiction of Margao Municipal Council have optedfor home isolation. In the absence of any mechanism worth its name in the cityto dispose of the bio-medical waste and with Hospicio refusing to accept thesame, the Margao Municipal Council has been left with no option but to stack itin a vehicle after sanitization.
Leftwith hardly any options to dispose of the bio-medical waste, the Margao civicbody has now knocked the doors of the South Goa District Collector to issuedirectives to the Hospicio authorities to accept the waste so that it isdisposed of by government-appointed agency at a common waste treatment facilityat the Goa Medical College, Bambolim.
MMCofficials told The Goan that no sooner the government’s SOP on home isolationcame into effect, the civic body ensure that black-and-yellow-coloured bagswere provided to the homes of the patients for disposal of both wet andbio-medical waste.
“Wehave provided yellow-coloured bags to the home isolated patients and have beencollecting the waste through a dedicated team of municipal workers, butsuddenly we are faced with the issue of disposal of the medical waste,"informed an MMC officer.
Sourcessaid the civic body had taken up the matter with the District Collector afterwhich the municipality delivered the collected bio-medical waste at theHospicio hospital for temporary storage and for its final disposal through thegovernment-appointed agency.
Thecivic body, however, has now told the Chief Officer that Hospicio hospital hasrefused to accept the bio-medical waste from the council.
“Adequatefacilities to deal with the disposal of the bio-medical waste are not availablewith the council. Under such circumstances, the council is not in a position todispose of the bio-medical waste collected from home-isolated Covid patients,”the MMC pointed out to the Collector on Wednesday, with a plea to impress uponHospicio to accept the bio-medical waste to be later collected by thegovernment-appointed agency.
“Wehave hardly any options on the disposal of the bio-medical waste. As atemporary and stop-gap arrangement, our workers have been told to sanitize thebio-medical waste and stack the same in bags and store it in a municipalvehicle till a solution is worked out by the Collector," an official said.
TheMMC has constituted an eight-member team of workers for Covid work, includingthe collection of waste from the homes of Covid patients.
