MARGAO: Margao Municipal Council chairperson Dr Babita Prabhudessai while calling for a holistic approach to deal with the garbage menace said that govt should come up with a State garbage management policy.
“Since the waste dumped in Margao comes mainly from neighbouring villages the government should come up with a garbage management policy applicable all over the state,” she said.
The MMC chief said Margao is suffering because of lack of facilities in neighbouring villages and even threatened to file a Public Interest Litigation against them.
Speaking to media persons she said it was not correct to distinguish garbage in terms of that generated in urban areas and in rural areas and argued that garbage is generated by everybody and all should sit across the table and find a solution.
Admitting that MMC appears to be targeted over the matter, she said, “While MMC has started segregated waste collection from households they are facing a severe problem of garbage being dumped on the roadside by people from neighbouring villages.”
“Ninety per cent of the waste found at the black spots is from the neighbouring villages and nobody is taking responsibility for that,” she said while adding that the contractors appointed by the villages in the coastal belt are the biggest culprits as they dump the waste at any open space they see and that too in the dark of the night.
She said recently they caught three persons who were dumping their wet waste by the road side and this included an hotelier from Borda, one chicken seller and one person from Ramnagri.
She disclosed that residents of Raia, Curtorim and Navelim are throwing their garbage in Margao at different places and rejected the claim that Navelim is managing its wet garbage. “The bio digester at Navelim can handle only 70 kgs of waste and is Navelim generating only that much wet waste when Nuvem generates 300 kgs of wet waste every day,” she said and argued that the other wet waste is just dumped in Margao.
While pointing out that MMC is being dragged into unnecessary litigation over garbage, she said probably it was time for them to file a PIL against those people dumping their waste in the jurisdiction of the city and dirtying it.
