It’s been over seven months since the Margao Municipal Council (MMC), led by Chairperson, Dr Babita Angle printed flyers and posters and sent them to every home and establishment announcing their segregated door-to-door garbage collection plan. Seven months down the line, the segregation is yet to begin. Municipal workers continue to collect unsegregated garbage and 90% of it, instead of being treated and sorted for recycling proceeds straight to the garbage dump, to increase the pile on the over 80 meter tall dump which will take millennia to disintegrate.
This time around, the municipality will not face flak for leachate, since the MMC managed to cover the dump with tarpaulin in the second week of June. Also, it has been secured with ropes to prevent leachate during the monsoons. The front which is visible from the road is covered while the back of the garbage dump still remains exposed to monsoons resulting in leachate percolating into ground water.
“We were lucky that the ropes and tarpaulin came at one go and in one tender from the Directorate of Municipal Authorities (DMA) or otherwise they would come separately. The process would then be delayed till as late as July end and the leachate would be an embarrassment to the MMC. However, this time it was one tender of Rs 12 lakh for temporary capping during the monsoons,” explains Angle, though the tarpaulin faces the ire of over 300 stray dogs and many eagles and crows that scavenge the area and invariably rip-off the tarp.
But the growing and towering dump raises one question – where is the whole segregation of garbage and when will it kick start to reduce the amount of waste going to the landfill which cannot be recycled?
“The plastic bottles, other plastics and recyclables are put with decomposed waste. They cannot be recycled and sorted and that’s exactly the problem here. We can’t do much unless the garbage comes sorted to Sonsoddo,” explains a Fomento Green employee who directs the unsorted waste to go to the dump on a crane after treatment.
“The only solution seems to be outsourcing the entire segregation. Our advertisement for expression of interest and a tender for segregating waste will appear in local newspapers this week. I know MMC workers face the ire of not doing a good job and unable to sort but let’s face reality – if they can’t do it despite multiple trainings, then we have to bite the bullet and outsource it, though it will come at a huge cost,” explains MMC acting Chief Officer, Y B Tawde.
Meanwhile, the inability of the MMC staff and council to distribute the thousands of new bins allotted to the MMC by the GSUDA which are lying in the open in the rains at Sonsoddo for over five months is another lacuna of the MMC workers.
“The MMC workers are yet to get their act together and identify homes with damaged or no bins. They are yet to kick start the whole segregation campaign and give homes bins to segregate waste. I admit it’s a failure of sorts from our end, but despite the pricing and the additional fees, I think our only option is outsourcing as quickly as possible,” explains Angle.
On the birthday of Vijai Sardesai, who boasts of wresting control on the MMC council and as the council is busy breaking coconuts and unveiling plaques ahead of elections, Margao continues to face the threat of untreated garbage with leachate entering groundwater and no solution in sight.
“Garbage should be this council’s priority and if proper mind, heart, soul and time are given, a solution can always be found. But this council doesn’t seem serious about helping residents to get rid of the garbage. Until they do that, and improve their own capacity of handling garbage and not find shortcuts through outsourcing, there really won’t be a change I believe,” asserted Rajeev Gomes, who feels the window period of this new council expires and the activist needs to step up. He also points out that based on the DMA’s recommendation, the MMC has failed to make citizen committees to overlook the garbage menace.
