TEAM HERALD
bureau@herald-goa.com
PONDA: With the enforcement of the door-to-door garbage collection system in Ponda, the Ponda Municipal Council (PMC) has removed bins from all 19 garbage collection points in the town.
It may be recalled that since the last seven months, PMC was struggling to manage garbage collection and disposal, amid allegations and counter-allegations from the ruling and opposition on the garbage disposal issue.
“There are still instances where people from neighbouring panchayats dump waste in PMC jurisdiction. Many have been caught red-handed and are advised not to throw garbage,” informed PMC Chairperson Rukmi Dangui.
“There has been good response from residents to door-to-door garbage collection and we aim for 100 per cent at source segregation of waste. PMC junior engineer Rajesh Fadte along with other staff visited all the residents and commercial establishments to sensitize people on garbage management,” informed Dangui.
“As the situation is in control, bins from the garbage collection points in the city have been removed recently. The barricading has also been removed from these places,” she said.
PMC has already distributed 5,000 plastic bins (10 litres capacity) to about 2,500 households, one for dry and another for wet waste, costing about Rs 9 lakh.
“We will procure more such bins which help in segregation of garbage at source. I urge people not to throw garbage on the road and to segregate the waste,” said Dangui.
Soon after Ponda Deputy Collector Johnson Fernandes took over the additional charge as PMC chief officer in mid-November last year, it was decided to collect hotel waste from source and to depute ‘whistle blowers’ at the garbage collection points.
“Initially, garbage was directly collected from hotels and PMC workers were deputed at the garbage collections points to deter residents from throwing garbage indiscriminately which helped a lot,” informed PMC municipal engineer Vinay Dessai.
“There are plans to purchase another organic waste convertor, but with a capacity of three tonnes to treat wet waste. The one which is operation has a capacity of 200 kg per day,” added Dessai.
