Sonsodo scare: Trash filling to the brim of plant once again

THE GOAN NETWORK | SEPTEMBER 18, 2021, 10:45 PM IST


Garbage unloaded on the road leading to the Sonsodo waste treatment plant on Saturday.       Santosh Mirajkar

MARGAO: Margao Municipal trucks unloaded the daily wet waste outside the Sonsodo waste treatment plant on Saturday as the plant is almost full to the brim with city garbage.

Left with no option, the fleet of municipal vehicles dumped the morning waste outside the road leading to the plant. Municipal workers pointed out that the situation may force the vehicles to unload the waste outside the plant if the civic officials do not push back the waste inside the plant on priority.

“Our trucks cannot unload the waste inside the plant since the waste is lying unattended right at the entrance to the plant. We have been left with no option but unload the waste outside the road leading to the plant”, informed a municipal employee.

He added: “Unless the civic body deploys heavy earth moving machinery to push back the waste inside the plant, the situation will further aggravate and the workers may be left with no option than to dump the waste outside”.

In fact, an official said driver of the garbage-laden vehicles had to face the problem of going to the plant in reverse since there’s not much space around to turn back.

This is not the first time that the Sonsodo waste treatment plant has nearly saturated and the daily waste being dumped outside. In fact, the situation has been recurring every week and may not improve till the civic body deploys heavy machinery to push back the waste and compact the same inside.

Inquiries by The Goan have only revealed that the much-talked about Expression of Interest (EOI) inviting prospective contractors to run the plant for a year has remained only on papers. 

That’s not all. The civic body has also not floated the tender till date inviting bidders and companies to cart away and remediated the existing waste lying inside the plant.

A senior MMC official pointed out that the process to float the EOI to run the plant and the tender to remove the tonnes of waste inside the plant is almost ready and will be in public domain next week.

The official, however, said the MMC will have no option than to manage the problems plaguing the garbage management plant till such time the contractors are roped in to run the plant.

NO BALING, PLANT’S AILING


Mountain of dry waste at Sonsodo.  Santosh Mirajkar.

MARGAO: If the fleet of Margao Municipal vehicles dumped daily wet waste outside the Sonsodo waste treatment plant for of want of space inside the plant, dry waste has further piled up outside the plant for want of baling.

Baling of the daily dry waste, which is pegged around 12 tonnes, has come to a stop for close to a fortnight now over some issues related to electricity fault. 

So far, the MMC has not been able to resolve the power issue, resulting in accumulation of the plastic bags containing dry waste into a heap at Sonsodo. 

As reported earlier, the private contactor had refused to rectify the electrical fault on grounds that the civic body had defaulted in clearing his previous payments amounting to Rs 68,000.

The contractor is believed to have made his presence felt at Sonsodo after the civic body promised to clear the pending duess.

Sources, however, said it will take some time for the civic body to clear the mound of dry waste at Sonsodo.

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