If the State bureaucracy decides to go slow on a garbage management project, no amount of ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’ appeals by Prime Minister Narendra Modi can do anything to expedite the cause.
This is the situation at Agonda village, the first and only panchayat among seven others in the taluka to possess land for a Garbage Disposal Site under a court-monitored Rural Garbage Disposal Scheme.
The file was first moved in 2006 to acquire land for disposing garbage in accordance with High Court directives in earmarking suitable land under Rural Garbage Disposal Scheme (RGDS). Since then, the file has encountered several hurdles at various government departments, besides resistance from some unknown private parties.
“Only recently, we received an award order and also possession of 5,011 sq mtrs of vacant land located in Agonda. The file is now moved for mutation procedures,” informed Agonda Panchayat Secretary Damodar Kankonkar.
“Only after mutation we will be able to construct fencing and other infrastructure needed, before we start to dump garbage there,” said Kankonkar, when asked when the panchayat would begin full-fledged garbage collection in the village.
At present, Agonda is heavily involved in tourism and hence, garbage is a huge concern among tourism operators and residents.
Agonda panchayat has engaged two workers to collect only plastic waste and does not collect wet garbage, in the absence of any place to dump wet garbage.
The accumulated plastic behind the Panchayat Ghar is then taken away by a government-appointed contractor, while the wet and other waste generated at the shacks/huts is clandestinely dumped into village water bodies like rivulets, streams, ponds, unused wells, and by the roadside.
Payment to acquire the land for the garbage dumping site was made to the land owner (Comunidade) to the tune of Rs 17 lakh, of which the panchayat’s contribution was Rs 7.48 lakh and the remaining payment was to have been made by the Directorate of Panchayats (DoP).
The final award was, however, only Rs 6,81,933 and the Comunidade had to return the extra amount to the DoP and the local body.
“The initial earmarked land was rejected by Goa Pollution Board on grounds that the area is on a plateau. The local body responded by recommending a new vacant land belonging to the comunidade,” said a panchayat source.
“Since then, the acquisition of this land has run into abnormal delays and the file has been stranded at various government levels for months together, even though the owners concerned had granted their approval to the acquisition,” the source added.
Asked to explain the delay in acquiring the land during his tenure, former sarpanch Jovi Fernandes said, “The previous panchayat body was unhappy over the undue delay. The panchayat had even dashed off at least two letters to the South Goa Collector to invoke the ‘Urgency Clause’ under Section 17 of Land Acquisition Act, but to no avail.”
“On the one side, there was pressure from the High Court to finalize the garbage site, but on the other hand, the government departments failed to act and support the local body in this regard. As a result, there was a delay in clearing the land acquisition file,” informed Fernandes.
Interestingly, sources informed that the comunidade land earmarked for the garbage site and its adjoining areas were being eyed by some land sharks for a high-end hotel project. The land sharks had apparently used their might to scuttle the panchayat’s move to allot that land for a garbage disposal site.
“These very people played havoc with the now rejected Regional Plan-2021, as they bypassed most recommendations of the villagers and panchayat in the draft RP-2021. The villagers were outraged to note two micro industrial zones, two disaster sites and various green and sensitive areas were shown as settlement zones,” said the source.
Agonda Sarpanch Navneeta Naik Gaonkar has assured villagers in the recent gram sabha that the garbage problem would be resolved as soon as the garbage site becomes operational.
In the meanwhile, rag pickers have been having a field day at the plastic waste dump site behind the Agonda panchayat Ghar, as they have been helping themselves to the plastic garbage dumped at the site.
