the goan I network
MARGAO
Does the Margao Municipal Council have any answer to the rampant burning of waste in the commercial capital, both by civic workers and citizens, in violation of the Solid Waste Management Rules?
While the government and the Margao civic body is considering a proposal to introduce the thermophilic anaerobic digestion technology at Sonsodo to rid the decades old waste, there seems to be no answer to waste burning in the city till date.
It’s an open secret that the Margao Municipal Council workers prefer to set waste on fire every morning across the city instead of dumping it in waste bins.
The Goa State Pollution Control Board (GSPCB) had in the past warned the Margao civic body and directed it to initiate action against persons involved in waste burning, but in vain.
Sources in the civic body informed that the municipal authorities should sensitize the civic workers who burn waste every morning and instead ask them to collect and dump it into waste into bins. “The civic body should make a beginning by sensitising and educating the municipal workers how harmful it is for the citizens when waste is disposed off by burning,” an official said.
Waste burning is not uncommon along the railway tracks where people dispose of their daily garbage.
With the garbage remaining unattended for days together, especially along the tracks, citizens tend to dispose of the waste by burning.
“The municipality is contemplating on using the thermophilic anaerobic digestion technology at Sonsodo to rid the site of the two-lakh tonnes of existing waste. But, time has come for the civic body to ensure that neither its workers nor the general citizen burn waste in their backyard,” sources said.
What’s interesting to note is the fact that while the civic body boasts of implementing door-to-door waste collection across the city, questions are being raised in municipal circles how waste lands on the roadsides and railway tracks and whether the municipality has any plan of action
to lift the waste dumped
in the open.
