Garbage collection and sanitation at Margao Municipal Council is set to get a fillip as the much-awaited Sanitation Committee has been finally constituted and had its first meeting on 15th February. The council was formed in October 2015.
Headed by Angelis Pereira the Sanitation Committee has SuchitaMalkanekar, Lyndon Pereira, KhutbuddinBhagewadi and Damodar Naik as its member. Dr Babita Prabhudessai as the Chairperson of the MMC becomes an ex-officio member of the committee.
“The Sanitation committee was constituted only about a month back and I also needed some time to study the subject,” said Angelis explaining why the meeting was held after such a long gap.
The present Deputy Chairperson Tito Cardoso was elected chairman of the Sanitation Committee soon after the council as formed. However, as he became the Chairperson of the Market Committee following his election as Deputy Chairperson in September 2017 he resigned as chairperson of Sanitation Committee.
Since then the Chairperson Dr Babita Prabhudessai has been managing the affairs of sanitation even though the sanitary committee was not constituted. “As I was dealing with the Solid Waste Management Corporation, I only managed all matters that would have been normally done by the Sanitation Committee,” admitted Dr. Babita.
What is surprising is the fact that various decisions regarding sanitation of the city which should have been made by the Sanitation Committee were suo moto taken up by the council and even implemented. For example, it was the MMC that decided to erect transfer stations in ever ward for the door to door garbage collectors to keep the collected garbage which is then collected by MMC garbage collection vehicles.
While earlier one would see garbage piled at various places, since the transfer stations are erected the city looks cleaner even though the collection from the transfer station could be improved as the area around these stations is littered with plastic and other waste.
Another decision taken by the council without any prompting from the Sanitation Committee was the move to segregate waste collection from households. MMC is already collecting segregated waste from 6 wards all of which are in Fatorda assembly constituency.
Around 41 labourers have been employed to collect the segregated waste from these six wards and are paid Rs. 500 per day. This resulted in the other workers protesting and now even their wages are increased. “While we have around 150 workers including the drivers dealing with garbage in the other wards, we actually need around 250 workers to collect segregated garbage from each household,” said one Sanitary Supervisor.
The Sanitation Committee at its meeting on 15th February decided to recommend to the council to purchase 500 big bins to collect the garbage and also to provide identity cards with a photograph and the name to all the workers dealing with garbage management.
