MARGAO
After endless delays and wastage of public funds, the Margao Municipal Council on Tuesday unveiled the road map to bring about a turnaround in garbage management at Sonsodo by mulling host of measures and projects costing the civic body over Rs 5 crore.
Days after the day-to-day waste handling came under the High Court scanner, with the Court directing the civic body to file a compliance report on April 10, the Sonsodo road map received the nod from the Margao City Fathers at a special meeting chaired by Margao Municipal Chairperson Damu Shirodkar on Tuesday. The action plan approved by the civic body will now be filed before the High Court on April 10 after discussing the same with the Goa Waste Management Corporation (GWMC).
Margao Municipal Assistant Engineer, Vishant Naik informed that all the garbage management works at Sonsodo, besides the door-to-door waste collection will be funded through the 14th Finance Commission after obtaining permission from the government.
The action plan entails a host of projects, including the project to cart out piled up waste inside the Sonsodo waste management shed at a whopping cost of Rs 2 crore. The plan has envisaged a total stop to daily wet waste dumping inside the shed in the next six months. Instead, the plan has proposed to build platforms to treat the daily waste through windrow composting. A shed is proposed to be built to cover the platform during the monsoons.
The project includes construction of leachate collection tank with drainage system, PVC tank, plinth side walls and tarring of road besides MSV shed at Sonsodo; construction of composting platform for windrow composting on the western sides of the Sonsodo shed; repair and construction of eastern side plinth wall and construction of drainage system with platform for windrow composting at Sonsodo.
The project also calls for construction of shed over the concrete platform on the western side of the Sonsodo shed.
The project includes installation of power transformer at a cost of over Rs 50 lakh. The Power Department will take up the work under the 14th Finance Commission as a depository work.
The Margao Municipal Chairperson Damu Shirodkar explained the City Fathers that work has already commenced at Sonsodo, adding that the results will be seen at the waste dumping site in the next 2-3 months. He said the Council will not utilise civic funds to implement the action plan, saying the entire project will be funded through the 14th Finance Commission funds.
When former chairpersons Lyndon Pereira and Ganashyam Shirodkar sought to know the fate of the previous resolutions adopted by the civic body to take up the Sonsodo waste management project through GWMC, engineer Vishant pointed out that the project did not find favour with the Urban Development Ministry, which insisted the MMC takes up the project departmentally.
The engineer, however, hastened to add that the action plan is being mooted by the civic body after discussing with GWMC MD Levinson Martins.
Council okays bids for door-to-door collection, to cost Rs 5.5 cr annually
MARGAO: Door-to-door waste collection by the two private agencies in the commercial capital will cost the Civic body close to a whopping Rs 5.5 crore annually.
Tuesday saw the Margao Municipal Council giving its acceptance for the bids submitted by Ms Green Globe and Bapu Environment Engineering, paving the way for the issuance of work orders to start the door-to-door waste collection in the city from the new financial year on April 1.
The decision has finally capped the long delay in tendering the door-to-door waste collection job to the private agencies. In fact, these two agencies have been collecting the waste door-to-door since the time the MMC had embarked on the project, with the two agencies receiving extensions for continuation of work in the absence of a tender.
MMC officials in the know informed that the two agencies have bagged the contract after they participated in the e-tendering process. “Since their bids were comparatively less than the other bidders, they have been shortlisted to execute the work,” sources said.
