MARGAO
Pune-based Ms Urja Biosystems finally made its presence felt in the SGPDA market on Thursday, days after the agency bagged the contract to set up the city’s first 5TPD bio-methanation plant at a cost estimated around Rs 2.40 crore.
The agency has got a six-month time-limit to get the bio-methanation plant started, but the issue has thrown up a host of questions, which may warrant an answer not just from the three MLAs representing the Margao Municipal area, but the 25 new City Fathers who will be elected in the April 23 polls.
As the election panels fielded by the key political players are busy giving final touches to their election manifestos, a pertinent question has come to the fore whether the bio-methanation technology is an answer to the burning garbage issue plaguing the commercial capital over the years.
That’s not all. For the moment, the MMC administration has gone in for a lone bio-methanation plant in the city to check the efficacy of the technology, throwing up another pertinent question “ whether the civic body should go in for more bio-methanation plants, say 6-7 plants as was decided by the outgoing council, to address the garbage problem?
Given the stiff opposition to the proposal to set up as many as seven plants, both within and outside the civic body, the new set of councillors will have to take a call whether it will be prudent to spend Rs 40-odd crores on these plants or to go for a comprehensive and permanent solution to the garbage mess a la Saligao.
Questions may be further asked whether it will be prudent for the council to spend a bomb on the bio-methanation when the government is going ahead with a common waste treatment facility for Salcete at the Verna industrial estate.
Margao Municipal’s track-record in handling the garbage problem, both collection and disposal, has been dismal, with a holistic and comprehensive solution eluding the city till date.
Otherwise, consider this. Door-to-door waste collection was initiated in the city over half-a-decade ago in 2013-14, but the system is yet to fall in place. Take note, the last council did try to fine tune the system and introduced baling of dry waste, but waste segregation is still a far cry.
It’s now over a year since Fomento Green quit Sonsodo and handed over the waste treatment plant and machinery to the civic body to handle garbage disposal. Leave alone streamlining the sysem, the MMC, however, has been found struggling to run the plant and machinery over the last one year.
The only noteworthy change taking shape at Sonsodo in these five years is the bio-remediation of the Sosnodo legacy dump. Says Goa Waste Management Corporation Managing Director, Levinson Martins: “The bio-remediation project is progressing as per the schedule. There were some minor issues over the transportation of the dry waste to the cement factories in Karnataka, which stands settled now. We are on the job to remediate the entire legacy dump. Remediation of the legacy dump will not only remove the eyesore, but will help the Civic body to set up a project on the reclaimed land”.
While remediation of the legacy dump may be complete in the coming months, the new set of councillors will have a clear task cut out “ how to put in place a mechanism to handle daily waste collection and disposal, a question that has eluded an answer over the years.
