If there is one promise that is right up there in bold print in every councillor’s manifesto for every Margao Municipal Council election, it is to clean the town of its garbage problems.
Yet, any plans to tackle this issue is plagued by problems and ironically it is the lack of willpower and proper implementation and well-laid plans that have caused the stench.
Following pressure exerted by the then chief secretary and government agencies, especially the Goa State Urban Development Agency (GSUDA), Margao municipality finally set the ball rolling in August 2014.
Failure to make payments to the workers engaged in door-to-door collection, in addition to the failure to distribute bins, gloves and to reach out to all the households across all 20 wards, caused several major teething problems.
At the turn of the year, the municipality then switched to the system of contracting around eight self-help groups (SHGs), to sort the collection of garbage.
However, the problems of payments persisted and soon many of these workers quit and the system is staring at a colossal failure.
Savio Coutinho who was part of the Solid Waste Management Cell that launched the scheme pointed out that the daily wage workers need to get paid higher than their current pay of Rs 221 a day. He further pointed out that these workers being temporary do not get washing allowance and garbage allowance which is given to other fixed workers.
The SHGs are dependent on the payment of garbage collection fees by the city households and commercial establishments, besides proceeds from the sale of the recyclable items.
However, some of these workers are unable to collect garbage from certain sections of the households as they face a hostile reaction and there are issues as to where the garbage should be kept and from where it should be collected.
Further, some of the housing societies that have their own in-house garbage collection system have declined to pay the garbage collection fees.
“This is where the municipality should intervene and either enforce a garbage collection fee or actively act on the feedback they receive from the appointed supervisors,” said Borda resident Ryan Furtado.
Coutinho warned that the SHGs set up would cease to be feasible and hoped that the chief officer will look at the workers’ demands of increasing the daily wage fees for workers and drivers to Rs 300 and 350 respectively.
“There needs to be a systematic solution to all these problems as the problems do not end just with the collection of garbage. Who will ensure that the garbage is segregated and reaches the treatment plant without being mixed together,” said Margao resident Franklin Rebello.
MMC Junior Engineer Deepak Desai added that these were teething problems and exuded confidence that the workers would have no issues in collecting the garbage and that the citizens would pay accordingly.
The door-to-door collection of garbage in Margao has employed 56 labourers for collection in various areas. However, the labourers haven’t been paid their wages for quite a long time. The pendency of outstanding wages has reached to Rs 9,000 per labourer. Councillor of Ward No 5 Raju Naik has accused the chief officer of not checking the status of the garbage collection and the bottlenecks. Naik further said that as a result of delayed picking of garbage the people have stopped paying the fees. In Ward No 15 the garbage is not picked for days at a stretch.
One of the town residents, Jaya Amonkar said, “Garbage from our building is not picked for three to four days. We have to keep the garbage outside and dogs pick the bags and scatter the filth all over the place. The municipality should keep a bin for such areas, but sadly there is no bin here.” She also claimed that she has called on the local councillor a number of times but nothing has changed.
