MARGAO
With just a week to go for the implementation of the waste-collection exercise in the city from January 31, the Margao Municipal Council is facing a challenge of convincing and persuading the 40,000 households and business establishments to hand over their waste to the civic workers in a segregated form.
In fact, even municipal officials admit in private waste segregation inside the households have still not been accepted by citizens till date, even though it’s now around half a decade since the civic body had initiated the door-to-door waste collection in the city .
Field workers appeared a disappointed lot over the exercise with majority of households handing over unsegregated waste, but optimistic senior officials feel the ground reality will change after the awareness programmes across the city.
However, civic field workers moving door to door to collect the daily waste from the thousands of households have pointed out that they continue to receive unsegregated waste despite requesting citizens to hand over dry and wet waste separately.
That’s not all. Most people, the workers say, continue the practice of handing the unsegregated waste in plastic bags. “When we request the citizens to hand over the waste in segregated form, the response from the households is lukewarm. We are helpless, leaving us with no option but to accept the unsegregated waste,” remarked a field worker engaged in door-to-door waste collection.
Municipal officials, however, say they are aware of the problems existing on the ground. “As of now, we have told the field workers to ask the households to hand over only segregated waste, but we had anticipated the problems that will arise on the ground,” a senior MMC official told The Goan.
To tide over this problem, the MMC is mulling launching a concerted education awareness drive across the city to make the citizens cooperate with the door-to-door waste collection in segregated form. “We plan to come out with thousands of banners and other propaganda material across the city with a humble plea to go for waste segregation at source and help avoid problems at the Sonsodo waste dumping site,” the official informed.
He, however, hastened to add that the civic body will also keep the option open of cracking a whip against the erring households if the education programme and other persuasive means fail to achieve the objective.
A MMC official told The Goan that the civic body is indeed facing a big challenge on how to persuade the households to go in for waste segregation at source. “Right now, unsegregated waste forms major component of the waste carted to the Sonsodo waste dumping site. We have to tide over the problem at the earliest otherwise the waste treatment plant will be choked with unsegregated waste,” another civic official added.
The Margao municipality has set January 31 as the deadline to start waste segregation at source following the directions issued by the National Green Tribunal’s regional committee.
