It was a pretty clean and refreshing sight. The Chief Minister took to the beach, picked up a fancy broom and leveled some sand, kick starting a much needed beach cleaning exercise at Miramar as a more than symbolic commencement of cleaning up our most precious treasure.
While the initiative came not a day too soon, and to be honest, actually very late, it must be backed, not by machines, but by the will of the people. There is indeed a lot to take on the government for. However on the issue of beach and town cleanliness and waste management, the accountability needs to be shared between the government and the people. A phenomenal growth in population and construction has never been in sync with urban planning and waste management. The garbage on the beach is a part of this problem because the beach and its contiguous surroundings have become dumping grounds of not just tourists, but residents of towns.
Mucking up beach areas is not a tourist sport. As Herald found out when it first launched its beaching cleaning campaign, beach litter is a part of the universe of litter which engulfs rivulets, streams, riverbeds, culverts and toad sides. Therefore it cannot be “tourism’s headache”. This becomes more acute in towns like Panjim where there the beach and the town merge seamlessly.
However while people have behaved irresponsibly, local bodies have left the issue of waste treatment completely open. As our package on page 2 reveals, the Banguinim Waste management plant, designed scientifically, is on a go slow mode primarily because of opposition from politically backed builders who believe that land rates will drop next to a waste management plant. A 90 crore grant from the JNNURM has been sanctioned of which Rs 6 crores have been disbursed for project commencement. If this goes the way of most projects funded by the Centre, where utilization is poor and delayed till the very last moment, Panjim’s plan to be clean will be setback by at least another five years.
There is no option but to put in place a fresh integrated clean up and treatment plan starting with bins in strategic places in Panjim, by ditching the well meaning but impractical adventure of having a bin less Panjim. While bins on beaches will help, a dedicated team should sort beach garbage out and send the sorted waste to the either plastic bailing units or the dry waste for treatment. This force should cover the beach and surrounding areas, not just in Panjim but in every beach area of Goa.
At the same time all hotels need to be roped in as compulsory stakeholders since they benefit the most from the beaches. It should be made compulsory for all seaside hotels to contribute to the beach cleaning cost, even if they already are because very seldom do hotels cover areas beyond the immediate stretch of their hotels.
The broad point is this. The time for passing the blame for this has gone. No one in their right senses has the authority to decide on heroes and villains because it is pretty clear that this script does not have heroes. It however needs saviours. The Chief Minister must personally see to it that this momentum does not slack. At the same time garbage management, sorting and treatment needs to keep pace with beach cleaning. And finally there should be tangible monitoring of the extent of garbage that still remains with the help of technology and satellite maps and ground images.
