Team Herald
MARGAO: Fomento Green, the concessionaire of the Sonsoddo Plant, has handed a letter to the Margao Municipal Council offering to hand over the Sonsoddo Plant to MMC. The concessionaire says that the situation at the plant has reached a point of crisis and is ready to hand over the plant within three days. The Margao Municipal Council is going to hold an urgent emergency meeting on Friday to decide on the future of the plant.
Fomento Green has alleged that despite their requests to MMC to cart away the Excluded Waste choking the plant, the municipality has failed to take it away. Fomento said that over 1,000 tonnes are piled up in the plant.
“The situation in the plant has now approached crisis level and we will be constrained to stop accepting any further MSW at the Plant within the next three to four days. The Plant is completely choked leaving no further space for garbage to be accepted,” Fomento wrote in their letter to the MMC.
Fomento, while offering to leave the plant for some competent authority to take it over, said, “Consequently, despite great prejudice being caused to us in not having received the termination payment, we are willing, solely in public interest, to immediately hand over the plant to you for undertaking operations therein yourself or by a competent agency without prejudice to the termination claim we have raised.
“The present situation has been brought about solely because the MMC has, contrary to MMC’s claims that MMC is supplying us segregate waste, persisted in supplying non-segregated waste to the plant and have failed to cart away the Excluded Waste. Significantly, the Analysis Report filed by the Goa Pollution Control Board with the Hon’ble District Court on 6.2.2020 in our Arbitration Application (copy of which was handed over to both the MMC and us by the Hon’ble Court) states, inter-alia, that the material in the plant is non-segregated solid waste mixed with garden waste, plastic waste, plastic products like gumboots, shoes, paper waste and coconut shells.
“This clearly shows that MMC is supplying us non-segregated solid waste despite the MSW Rules, 2016. It also buttresses our submissions that the material choking the plant is Excluded Waste comprising non-compostable material which is not designed or authorised to be received, managed, processed or disposed off in our Plant,” the letter added.
The MMC may have a big problem at hand as Fomento in their letter said “In our Termination Payment computation, valuation of certain assets were excluded, viz. JCB backhoe loader, weighbridge and a 320 KVA Diesel Genset. We will remove these assets from the site within 3 weeks from handover of the plant to you,” said the letter.
The Fomento has also asked the MMC to decide and communicate to them whether MMC would wish to take over the contract of Plant labour and technicians/operators. If not, they will terminate their services by giving relevant notice period. MMC will have to transfer the electricity and water connections to the Plant (which are presently in Fomento names) and pay the bills from date of take-over until transfer of the connections to MMC’s name.
With almost all the apparatus and large machinery for handling waste, MMC is now staring at a dead end as far as the garbage situation of Margao is concerned. The meeting on Friday will be decisive as far as the future of the plant.
