Team Herald
MARGAO: Accusing the civic authorities and contracted agencies of adopting crude methods of disposing Sonsoddo’s legacy waste by dumping in low lying areas without taking measures to prevent the pollution of the ground water table, the Shadow Council for Margao (SCM) has appealed to the High Court to intervene and scrutinise the ongoing bioremediation work at the dump yard. Savio Coutinho, Convenor of SCM, on Wednesday elaborated on the ‘atrocious’ state of affairs at the waste treatment plant.
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“The daily waste collected from around the Municipal jurisdiction is simply dumped at the entrance of the plant, and the Hitachi excavator hired by the Council merely pushes the waste further into the shed to make place for other trucks to dump waste,” said Coutinho, after visiting the site.
He remarked that the only treatment of waste that can be witnessed at Sonsoddo are the 100-odd dogs feasting on the wet waste, and the hundreds of birds feeding on the garbage at the plant.
“The Council and the government are to blame for this utter neglect and waste of funds, as all the authorities seem to be engrossed in feasting on the golden eggs from this goose, as the Sonsoddo project seems to be a gift that keeps on giving,” the SCM convenor added.
Hardly three months have passed since the Goa Waste Management Corporation, through its blue-eyed contractor, Hindustan Waste Treatment Pvt Ltd, cleared 14,380 cu mts of accumulated waste from the Sonsoddo plant. The same site is now, once again, overflowing with a similar quantity of accumulated waste, waiting to be ‘remediated’ through a pricey contract, lamented Coutinho. He recalled that this will be the third time accumulated waste will have to be cleared at the cost of the public exchequer, since Fomento handed the plant over to the MMC in February 2020.
“While the Council has been boasting about collecting segregated waste through their two favoured agencies, and supposedly delivering segregated wet waste to the Sonsoddo plant, why does this segregated waste need bioremediation at such huge additional costs?” questions the SCM.
