The performance of the Margao Municipal Council on Friday, on a day when it was supposed to take the first step towards a new reworked mindset towards waste management, was a journey of disbelief. As citizens of Margao have upped the ante towards ensuring that the first step towards segregated garbage collection takes place, the MMC decided to do some old school disruption management and prevent any conversation and dialogue. Friday’s emergency meeting to chalk out a road map for garbage management turned into a ruckus and a brawl with side issues like the “alleged physical assault and molestation” of one lady dominating the deliberations.
The MMC of course will have reason to turn this around and say citizens activists and ex-councillors have been disrupting their meetings and coming in the way of their officers, like the sanitary inspectors.
Civic Society needs to guard itself against being trapped into steering the game in the direction the MMC wants- which is dabbling in side issues and disruptions and avoiding any long term solutions to the issue of segregation and garbage collection.
The genuine peoples movement will serve itself better if it cuts out the noise and takes up each issue and hammers out a solution and then move on to the next specific. If it insists on looking into all macro issues including whether the Sonsoddo dump should be capped or not, it will see very little progress.
Currently all hands on deck must work towards setting up a mechanism for door to door collection thorough a segregated method. It is appalling that four years after signing a Concession Agreement with Fomento Green, the MMC chairperson casually remarked that the company should provide bins and help in the door to door segregation. But if this was the idea why wasn’t a tender floated or a resolution passed to amend the Concession agreement and issue a work order.
It’s another matter that the public confidence in Fomento Green solving the waste collection and management issue is at an all time low. However to maintain basic fairness, this criticism has to be balanced by taking an even more critical view of the council which has frozen the issue in time and not taken a single decision towards either segregated collection or the larger issue of treating waste at the plant site by offering additional land fill facilities for the existing waste.
It’s therefore time for civic society to take this in its own hands. It has to begin by starting what is called an Information, Education and Communication (IEC) campaign. This should lead to different localities and housing societies taking small steps towards segregation collection and even processing.
Over the next few weeks, while the larger battle to make the MMC deliver will go on, it is the more important backroom work will show better results. Initiatives like the one described below are the template for the future.
On Saturday Margao citizen’s, under the banner of “Goa with Love” will host an awareness drive and for Margao citizen’s on how to manage their garbage. One key force behind this move is Trifino Pacheco who made a point at the Herald–HCN debate that our councillors and residents don’t have any clue or education of garbage management.
The idea being pushed at this meeting will be that each household generates one kg and above of garbage every day and hence people themselves have to tackle their garbage. The workshop on Saturday, 11th July 2015, 4 pm – 5.30 pm at the Margao Municipal Hall will host Patricia Pinto, Campal resident who worked tirelessly as Corporation of the City of Panjim’s co-opted member to start a door to door fully sorted garbage, Rosario Dantes, who pioneers Curchorem’s success in garbage management and Salcete’s very own Clinton Vaz More power to them.
