PANAJI
Amid the litany of woes voiced by Goa's traditional 'pao' bakers recently to justify the hike in price from rupees four to five, yet another hurdle has come up their way: All bakeries and more urgently those operating in densely populated cities and towns will have to soon switch to electric ovens from their traditional wood-fired ones.
The Goa State Pollution Control Board (GSPCB) at its last meeting held in early September took the decision to categorise bakeries that bake quantities greater than one metric tonne per day and use the traditional wood-fired ovens in the "orange" category as per the statute.
"After due deliberations, the members approved to categorise these units under orange and direct all the bakeries operating in the city with a wood-fired oven to switch over to gas/electric ovens over a period of one year," stated the minutes of the GSPCB's 148th meeting which was held in early September.
Other bakeries will be given a period of two years to switch to electric/gas ovens, according to the minutes.
The meeting was chaired by GSPCB chairman Ganesh B Shetgaonkar, and attended by Ms Sarita Madkaikar, who is assistant surveyor of works as a representative of the WRD chief engineer, assistant geologist Jitendra Veluskar as a representative of the Director of Mines, Dr Surekha Parulekar as a representative of the Health Director, Calangute Sarpanch Shawn Martins, Sanvordem panch Sanjay Naik, CII Goa chapter chairman Atul Jadhav, Superintending Engineer Narayan Mayekar as a representative of the Goa Tourism Development Corporation and GSPCB member-secretary Dr Sharmila Monteiro.
The Board also decided to secure a list of all bakeries operating in jurisdictions of the civic bodies as well as panchayats to enable it to ensure compliance.
The GSPCB's argument and justification for their decision to ask bakeries to switch to electric or gas ovens is that several complaints have been received from residents of high-rise buildings in the localities where they operate.
In the minutes recorded by the Board, it is also argued in favour of categorising bakery units of greater than one metric tonne capacity as 'orange' as their score calculated by TAC is between 40 to 60 (approximately 43.75).
