TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
MARGAO: Cuncolim Municicpal Council is one of the civic bodies in the State which had embarked upon door-to-door waste collection in its jurisdiction since 2011.
The exercise has been carried out virtually free of cost since day one with the civic body footing the garbage collection expenses, but a cent per cent segregation of waste at source still eludes the municipality. It’s not uncommon to find municipal workers moving around with mobile bins across the town collecting waste door to door. The civic body has been spending nearly Rs three lakh a month on the exercise, but waste segregation at source is still a far cry in the town.
When contacted, Municipal Chairperson Devendra Desai said the civic body has distributed two bins to each of the 6,000 households for separate collection of bio-degradable and non-biodegradable waste. He, however, admitted that lack of awareness amongst the households, besides other logistics problem has come in the way of achieving hundred per cent target on segregation of waste at source. “We have provided 12,000 bins to each of the 6,000 households located in the town. The objective behind providing two separate bins was to facilitate segregation of waste at source. Our information suggests that people by and large hand over the waste separately, but I admit that the exercise is not 100 per cent successful,” Desai added.
Incidentally, the civic body has engaged as many as 10 labourers to sort out the waste at the waste treatment plant located at the Cuncolim Industrial Estate. Waste received from the municipal vehicles is first sorted by these labourers before it goes to the plant for treatment.
Incidentally, the CMC Chairperson admitted that the civic body is incurring an expenditure of nearly 90,000 a month on these contract labourers. “The civic body spends around Rs three lakh every month on door-to-door waste collection and for sorting the waste at the treatment plant,” the Chairperson said.
“The civic body has been implementing the exercise free of cost. We have not charged any of the households for the waste collection,” he said, adding that the civic body only levies a minimum amount on the commercial establishments dotting the town.
