Team Herald 

PANJIM: Following the Herald expose on the manipulations in the GSPCB permissions for bio-medical waste, Goa Health Monitoring Services (GHMS) has squarely blamed the pollution board for the “error”.

The GHMS, speaking to Herald, said it was an error by the GSPCB and not from them.  “We had applied for the permissions per day but the GSPCB while granting permissions gave it in their format of handling Bio-Medical Waste (BMW) per month”.

Dr Sail said the agency had reached a figure after they conducting a survey in Panjim for one month from July to August 2016.

“When we applied for permissions it was for per day not month but GSPCB gave us per month,” he tried to explain. However, when asked who did the cancellations on original permissions and submitted to Public Health Department, he had no answer.

“This is a thankless job we are doing for society. If somebody else is ready to do it we are ready to hand it over but such criticism is unwarranted,” he said trying to defend the manipulations. However, while admitting it was a mistake to get the mistake rectified, “we had asked the GSPCB to rectify the error but it wasn’t done.” Secondly, he said, the GHMS is not charging the GMC at all as they were using the hospital infrastructure for treating the waste. “Even the others, we charge nominally, which has been agreed by all,” he said.

While it is crystal that the manipulations have occurred what is raising eyebrows is why did the government authority the Health Department not even bother to check the authenticity of the permission granted by another government agency that is GSPCB.

Documents accessed by Herald highlighted a major manipulation by the contractor Goa Health Monitoring Services (GHMS) to sign a memorandum of Understanding with the Health Department for operation of biomedical waste management plant at Goa Medical College and Hospital, Bambolim.

The documents show that the GSPCB vide letter dated No 13/388/17-PCB/Tech/ 132 dated 04/04/2017 has given authorisation to GHMS for operating a facility for generation, collection, reception, treatment, storage, transport and disposal of bio-medical wastes.

The GHMS has been granted permission for handling medical waste in following categories;

Yellow waste 106.50 kg/month, Red 32 kg/month and white (translucent) 2.5 kg/ month.

However, in the file for signing the MoU with the Public Health department, the GSPCB permission with same no and date has been found to be manipulated.

Instead of Yellow waste 106.50 kg/month , Red 32 kg/month and white (translucent) 2.5 kg/ month as per original order has been changed to Yellow waste 106.50 kg/day, Red 32 kg/day and white (translucent) 2.5 kg/ day (see specimen of permissions). All incinerable waste is taken to the GMC while non-incinerable waste is recycled at the biomedical waste management facility at a private hospital in Donapaula.