His job is to drive a pick-up loaded with garbage dodging the attention of people and dumping the same in an isolated plot at Verna IDC and returning without getting caught. He gets Rs 500/day for this odd early morning job and this has been going on for the past several months. If he is caught by police, his job is to look for another dumping spot.
It is very surprising and it is a fact that many Village Panchayats in Central Goa do not have their own garbage segregation and dumping sites. Most of these panchayats have identified a dumping area solely to comply with the High court directives. In reality however, garbage is collected from the village and dumped in eco sensitive zones by contractors having no knowledge that their illegal act is damaging the ecology and environment surrounding the site.
On June 11, Herald reported about an illegal garbage dumping site in an eco sensitive zone inside the forest cover at Santerant in Chicolna-Bogmalo Panchayat. In this case, the contractor engaged by the Panchayat collected mixed garbage waste including waste from hotels and restaurants and converted a cliff facing the Arabian Sea into a dump yard. The contractor still uses the yard without any fear due to the lack of action by authorities for reasons best known to them.
Similar to the site in Bogmalo, Herald came across another two such sites for illegal waste dumping collected from the villages of Sancoale, Chicalim, Verna, Nuvem, Loutolim and Cortalim.
The first of these two sites is located at the top of the Cortalim Hill and in an isolated area close to the PWD water reservoir. The access to this site is through the road leading to the PWD water supply unit at Consua. Due to the intense forest cover, it became a favoured site for garbage dumping.
Interestingly the then Cortalim MLA in the year 2010 had even proposed to have a modern garbage treatment plant in the area at the same site but his proposal was turned down by the Indian Navy as the same was falling under a flying zone nevertheless, the site continued to be used by the contractor. “We were earlier using the site but as the pit was full, we dumped loads of earth over the bump and have identified a new site,” confessed one of the contractors to Herald but wished not to be named.
The second site is located in a plot at IDC Verna. One can find loads of garbage dumped at the site while everyday, a new load gets accumulated here. Surprisingly the Verna Sarpanch Piedade Nunes acknowledges that. He has all the clues about the illegal dumping site but claims helplessness because they are unable to keep watch on the site and nab the culprits but in the bargain, the ecology in the area is falling victim to human disaster.
