The Sonsoddo garbage dump has caught fire. And why? Negligence it appears to be. So who is going to be responsible for this? There is, as of now, no answer. But will there be an answer to this? That is doubtful. The new chairperson of the Margao Municipal Council, who is less than a fortnight old in the chair and serving her first term as a councillor, appears to have no answers. The council also gets a new chief officer in the transfers that have been effected.
There are residences in the vicinity of the dump, there is a school adjacent to the garbage mound, but other than making statements that will get media coverage, there is little that the elected representatives of Margao have done to ensure that the growing Sonsoddo dump is contained, or that there will be no repeat of a fire. This is the second fire in six months at Sonsoddo, and this one occurred when the vertical scale a surveyor sent to quantify the dump accidentally came close to the 33 kVA high tension electric line running overhead and the resultant sparks triggered the blaze. The surveyor, who has been grievously electrocuted, has been admitted to hospital. The fire raged all day at the dump, emitting smoke that spread in the surrounding area even on the next day, bringing back memories that are still fresh of the clouds of smoke that had covered the villages surrounding Sonsoddo in early June when the dump fire had prolonged for well over a week.
The reason why this fire can be treated as negligence is because fresh garbage appears to have been dumped here, raising the height of the mound and leading to the accident that resulted in the fire. Had the growing pile of garbage not reached close to the high tension wires, there would have been no fire. It really is as simple as that. Besides, there had been concerns raised of the possibility of the dry waste catching fire but they went unheeded. The fire was preventable or at least had those dumping garbage at the site taken care to restrict the height of the mound, it would not have occurred.
MMC and the local MLA have abjectly failed in providing a safe environment to the people living in the vicinity of the Sonsoddo dump and the school children who study next to it. How much longer will the people continue to live in and the children study in an atmosphere that is not safe? And with the possibility of a fire occurring due to negligence? The garbage dump emits a foul smell, during the monsoon the leachate appears in the gutters alongside the road polluting the water and now the dump can also be considered to be prone to fires.
Recently the Waste Management Minister led a team to a tour in Europe, hoping to bring back technology that will solve the garbage problems in Goa. A month later, there is another problem that has cropped up, and this fire is a reminder that Goa is not at all close to finding a solution to the garbage issue. Is the government capable of handling the garbage situation in Goa? As the political class struggles to come to grips with the situation, this is beginning to look extremely doubtful.
The management of the Sonsoddo dump has to be taken out of the hands of the politicians and placed in the hands of experts. There appears to be no other solution to this. As fire raged on the second day before it was contained, the authorities looked almost helpless. There have been no lessons learnt, and no new techniques introduced. The garbage continues to burn, as the politicians look for solutions.
