the goan I network
MARGAO
What was feared all along came true on Monday as door to door waste collection in most of the areas in the 11 Margao Municipal wards coming under Fatorda area came to a screeching halt for want of a contractor to collect the waste.
With no waste collection taking place throughout Monday and fears that people may dispose of the waste in the open, the Margao Municipal Council approached the contractor with a plea to save the day for the Civic body by continuing with the waste collection work at least until February-end when the civic body hopes to rope in a new contractor.
Sources in the know say the contractor was called by municipal chairperson Pooja Naik and told to continue the door to door waste collection from Tuesday to save the day for the civic body. With fears raised in certain quarters that Fatorda may stink in the event alternate arrangements are not put in place, the contractor may resume operations from today.
The existing contractor had issued a notice way back in December last to quit the job on grounds that he was not getting payments on time, besides facing manpower constraints.
While his notice came into force on January 15, he was requested by the chairperson and Chief Officer Ajit Panchwadkar to continue at least until January 31 to facilitate the Civic body to float a tender to rope in a new contractor. The Civic body also cleared the contractor’s payment for the months of November and December which were due last month.
While the contractor continued his operation till January 31, he again reminded the Civic body of his decision to quit from February 1, only to be requested again to continue the job for want of an alternate garbage collection mechanism in place.
Naik told The Goan that the municipality wants the incumbent contractor to continue with the job at least for 2-3 months to facilitate the Civic body to comply with the codal formalities in appointing a new contractor.
“With the election code of conduct likely to come into force from February 15 because of the ensuing Zilla Panchayat polls, the municipality want the contractor to continue the exercise for the next two months atleast,” she said.
It is not out of place to mention here that the MMC had appointed two door to door waste collection contractors, to collect waste from the wards located in Margao and Fatorda as part of the plan to outsource waste collection in the city.
