MARGAO: The dredging of River Sal is slowly looking like money wasted due to the unprecedented discharge of sewage into the river, due to the delay in commissioning the Margao sewage treatment plant.
There have been demands that sources of pollution be plugged first and then to go ahead with dredging of River Sal which runs into crores of rupees.
Till date all along the river Sal at wholesale fish market, fish waste is being dumped in the river, downstream raw sewage lines are let into the river, ahead of that the waste from slaughter houses is being dumped into the river.
The condition of the river has already been shown and spoken by many people. An activist from Margao was even forced to approach the High Court over this bizarre issue that one department is cleaning the river while another is polluting it. Crores of rupees have been spent to clean the river which is public money but the river is back to its blackened form now.
Ideally, there had to be efforts made to curb the sources of pollution and then go ahead with the dredging of the Sal. However, desilting of the stretch of Sal was done in the past spending lot of money and now the river has gone from bad to worse.
TCP Minister Vijai Sardessai said, “The discharge of sewage is the major issue of River Sal. It will stop when the plant will be functional and we are expecting the plant to be commissioned very soon.”
On the root of the problem, Vijai said “Since the plant is not functional we can’t force the people to take the connections. The PWD minister has already discussed the date for commissioning of the plant at Shirvodem and we will see it coming soon.”
Vijai said the replacement of the North main sewerage pipeline is also a major issue where sewage is going into fields. “These are systemic issues, give us some time we will solve them,” Vijai said.
