City wants to ban film shoots that generate just 0.25% of it’s daily garbage
It was meant to be a masterstroke from City Corporation ofPanaji’s think tank corporators, what it ended up being was a bizarre andnonsensical account of the way Goa’s lone city corporation works. Earlier thisweek, CCP in another round of overzealous decisions sought to ban film shootsin Panjim city for good. The meeting resolved that the innumerable film shootswere creating garbage pileups across the city especially the heritage zones ofFontainhas and Campal and hence should be banned. For a city that has beenbattling to find a permanent home for its garbage for years, the issue issensitive enough only this time it is off the mark.
The Goan investigations reveal that film shoots is actuallyyielding less than quarter of a percent of Panjim’s total garbage per day. “Wegenerate anywhere between 100 to 120 kilos of garbage per shoot if not more ata normal shooting schedule in Panjim”, confirms Sandeep Kotecha, President, AllGoa Line Producers Association. Panjim churns out approximately forty fivethousand kilograms of waste per day as per JNNURM statistics. The film shootactually yields just 0.25% of the city’s daily garbage yield. Kotecha, aveteran of many a shoot’s revelation literally debunks CCP’s claims that filmshoots are a garbage churner and traffic hazard. An average film shoot hasabout 500 people working including 340-400 regulars and support servicesincluding taxis, water tankers etc. The favourite locale often beingFontainhas, Campal, Kala Academy, Miramar. The CCP charges every film shootingunit a flat rate of Rs 50,000 per shoot. But what the unit gets in return isvirtually nothing.
“We keep four workers of our own as CCP workers don’t cometo collect the garbage. Even dustbins are ours and once we have finished ashoot our workers clean up the garbage put them in the bags and drop them intothe nearest available bins”, Shiva Baba Naik, a veteran of many a famous filmshoot in Goa from Hollywood to Bollywood. Naik also adds that besides chargingRs 50,000, CCP does absolutely nothing for the shoot. They do not even check ormonitor whether refuse have been properly disposed. “We do it on our own andensure cleanliness since we have to come back for another shoot in the futuretoo”, adds Naik.
Ninety percent of the shoots in Panjim happen over theweekends when the traffic is scant due to the absence of office goers. On anaverage, five to six shoots happens every month in Panjim. But with CCP’soverkill of an industry that adds directly about five lakh rupees to itscoffers directly but in crores or even more, indirectly, CCP’s unscientificstand is anything but laughable.
