HC issues show cause notices to defaulting civic bodies
HERALD REPORTER
PANJIM, JAN 30
The inaptitude of municipal bodies in taking their civic duties seriously was once again highlighted on Friday, when it came to light that most have fallen short of delivering on High Court directives on garbage collection and building appropriate facilities for treatment of garbage.
In view of the failure of the municipalities in dealing with garbage problem, a Division Bench headed by Justice P B Majmudar, issued show cause notices to defaulting municipal councils asking why they should not be barred from issuing fresh construction permissions.
The Court was hearing a suo motto writ petition on garbage.
In a detailed order the High Court had last year issued several interim directions to municipal bodies to segregate waste collected, set-up adequate number of compositing bins, set up collection centers for inorganic waste, and compost organic waste.
The Goa State Pollution Control Board was directed to check on if the facilities set-up pursuant to High Court directed, were adequate.
The report filed by GSPCB however revealed that exception to few, most municipal bodies have not set up required facilities to take care of garbage generated in their respective jurisdictions.
The municipal bodies has to have land fill sites, however, even municipalities having possession of sites, have not set-up land fill sites.
The inspection carried out by GSPCB disclosed municipalities need to have more composting facilities. Some municipalities are yet to start with segregating garbage collected. They use the authorized site to dump un-segregated waste.
Also, buildings having more than twenty residential units have to have composting stations. But till date, only CCP is reported to have fulfilled the requirement. Other municipal bodies claimed to have issued directions to all new buildings with twenty residential units, to set up composting units.
The Director of Panchayat to file status report on coastal panchayats – The High Court on Friday directed the director of panchayat to file status report about garbage problem in coastal panchayats, and facilities set -up.
