the goan I network
MARGAO
Nearly five years after the Margao Municipal Council embarked on its ambitious door-to-door waste collection initiative, the municipality is facing an acid test, precisely from Monday, on how it will handle the situation, now that Fomento has resolved not accept mixed waste at Sonsodo.
Fomento has made it clear that from Monday it will not accept mixed waste as per the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016, and the civic body has taken a tough stand that it will not lift mixed waste from households.
Questions are being raised in city circles whether the civic body has the required wherewithal to hand over only segregated waste to the waste treatment plant. And, whether the municipality can expect the thousands of households to hand over segregated waste to the door-to-door waste collectors on Monday when the ground reality suggests otherwise.
Two crucial questions will come to haunt the civic body on Monday “ if waste-laden municipal vehicles are barred entry into the plant for want of segregated waste, where would the unsegregated waste finally land? Questions are being asked in the corridors of the civic body whether the unsegregated waste will be dumped on the existing site till a mechanism for waste segregation is finally put in place.
The second question that stares at the city fathers and Babus is where will the waste from the city households finally land if the civic body sticks to its stand not to lift mixed waste from Monday.
Margao Municipal Council’s track record of supplying segregated waste to the waste treatment plant at Sonsodo has been dismal till date. Despite the fact that the civic body embarked on the collection of segregated waste nearly half a decade ago, the MMC had little success on the waste segregation front.
Sources said even when citizens were handing over segregated waste to the waste collectors, the same was never transported separately to the waste treatment plant, which went in operation on December 12, 2012.
That the Sonsodo waste treatment plant was only receiving mixed waste from the Margao municipality became evident when senior officials, including Director of Municipal Administration Dr Tariq Thomas, and Managing Director of Solid Waste Management Corporation saw for themselves how the supply of unsegregated waste, including tonnes of plastic waste was choking the plant, which they agreed was receiving waste far beyond the plant capacity.
Both Chairperson Babita Prabhudesai and Chief Officer Sidhivinayak Naik were not available for comments on whether they have any plan of action to handle the garbage situation on Monday. Sources in the know said the municipality may take refuge in the existing waste dump, which was engulfed in a major fire recently.
That the Chairperson said that the High Powered Coordination Committee (HPCC) has not barred the civic body from dumping fresh waste on the dump, only goes to show that the civic body may use the option of disposing
waste at the existing site for the time being.
