MARGAO
The council's move to outsource door-to-door waste collection project with the sole objective of ensuring segregation of waste at source has failed to take off despite the fact that the municipality had floated a tender to that effect.
Blame it on manpower shortage or simply lack of political will in the civic body, or absence of awareness amongst the citizens, waste segregation at source has still not caught the attention of the city households. It's now close to half a decade since the Margao civic body had distributed bins for collection of dry and wet waste, covering all the 35,000 city households, but the bins have still not put to use till date.
Door-to-door waste collectors told The Goan that they normally receive mixed waste from the households. Since there's no facility for waste segregation, the garbage then finds its way into the municipal trucks which is later unloaded at the Sonsodo waste treatment plant site.
"People normally hand over mixed garbage. We accept the waste and since there is no facility to segregate the waste at our end, we dump the waste in the bins, which later find its way to the treatment plant at Sonsodo," remarked a door-to-door waste collection worker.
MMC officials, however, sought to attribute the failure of the waste segregation at source to the manpower shortage faced by the civic body. "Right now, we have an army of 126 door to door waste collection on rolls, of which only 96 report for work. Then we have no back up facility in the event any of the workers fall ill. Unless the civic body has sufficient workers to carry out the door-to-door collection exercise, things will not improve in this regard," informed MMC Sanitary inspector, Viraj Arabekar.
Sources in the know said the municipality ought to increase the strength of the door to door waste collection force by another 100 workers to get the waste segregated before it reaches Sonsodo.
"The municipality should set up sorting stations in each of the wards so that waste segregation takes place before it finds its way into the municipal trucks," informed another official.
When The Goan contacted MMC chairperson Babita Angle Prabhudesai to shed light on the utter failure of the segregation of waste at source, she said the municipality has given utmost priority for solid waste management.
"We are aware of the various shortfalls, including manpower shortage to deal with the door to door waste collection. We want to have a holistic approach to the issue," she said, adding that the civic body would soon evolve a solution to ensure that waste segregation at source is back on the rails.
