MARGAO
A stitch in time saves nine, so goes the good old wise saying. One, however, does not find this mentioned in the workbook of the Margao Municipal Council.
In fact, welcome to the Margao Municipal Council, where tax payers money simply goes down the drain for want of quick decisions and application of mind, causing loss to the treasury.
Take the case of the waste mound inside the Sonsodo waste treatment plant. Exactly a year ago, the Goa Waste Management Corporation (GWMC) with NOC from the Margao Municipal Council had carted away thousands of tonnes of waste stacked inside the waste treatment plant at a whopping cost of Rs 84 lakh. The GWMC had initiated the exercise with a two-fold objective; to rid the waste treatment plant shed from the accumulated waste and to make space for daily waste generated in the city.
A year later, the Sonsodo waste treatment plant is almost full with waste, indicating that the civic body utterly failed to treat the daily waste that had found its way into the plant for a year now. Instead of treating the daily waste, waste piled up inside the shed without any treatment worth its name.
What was feared has come true with the civic body finding it difficult to dump daily waste inside the plant.
That’s not all. The MMC is yet to clear the GWMC-appointed contractor of the payment amounting to Rs 84 lakh till date, with the civic body insisting the payment will come after the government accords sanction.
What’s interesting to note is that the civic body is now again bracing up to cart away the existing accumulated waste from the plant into the legacy dump. With the civic body throwing its hands up that it has no wherewithal to handle the daily waste coming into the plant, the Municipality has now proposed to empty the plant of the waste before the same is handed over to the contractor for waste treatment.
In fact, if the civic body is giving final touches to the Expression of Interest (EoI) to appoint a contractor to treat the daily waste, the Municipality is on the job to prepare estimates to cart away the piled up waste from the plant and its treatment.
And, if it had cost Rs 84 lakh for the civic body to cart away the mound of waste from the plant last year, The Goan understands that a similar exercise will now cost the civic body a whopping Rs 1.50 crore, including the cost of remediation.
A civic official conceded that over 7,000 tonnes of waste is presently stacked inside the waste treatment plant, adding that the Municipality is required to empty the plant of the waste before any contractor comes forward to take up the daily treatment of waste.
