Team Herald
MARGAO: Residents of Margao while coming down heavily on Fomento Green and the Margao Municipal Council for the garbage mismanagement at Sonsoddo resolved amongst other things to create awareness on segregation at source by going to the households along with the municipal worker collecting the garbage from the households.
Around 30 people gathered at a meeting convened by the Shadow Council for Goa stressed the need for segregated waste collection and in order to have segregation at source, it was decided to undertake an awareness drive by visiting the houses along with the municipal worker.
At the same time, the council would be persuaded to transport the dry and wet waste separately instead of the present manner where both the wastes are transported together thereby soiling the dry waste and making it useless for recycling.
The residents also resolved to ask the concerned three MLAs to intervene with Fomento Green to resolve the present crisis besides also colleting the sanitation fees even from those who are not assessed for house tax as even they generate waste whose clearance is paid for by “honest tax payers”.
It was also decided to rope in the students and management of the 21 high schools, seven higher secondary schools and three colleges in Margao to have a separate garbage management system for the institutions to encourage students to dispose waste in segregated form which would help transfer the practice to households.
While acknowledging that there is an increase in the garden waste specially coconut palm leaves, the council was asked to take up disposal of such waste on an urgent basis.
Various speakers gave their suggestions with most of them blaming the council with Principal of Cuncolim College Sanjay Dessai straight away blaming the council for not having the will to deal with garbage.
“If the garbage accumulated in Curchorem could be cleared in two years why has the same not happened at Sonsoddo,” he asked and called for a revolution on garbage management.
Eliterio Cardoso, who is managing the garbage in Navelim while refuting MMC Chairperson Dr Babita Prabhudessai’s claim that Navelim residents are dumping their garbage in Margao said their village in fact is getting garbage from Margao particularly near the sewage treatment plant.
He offered his services in creating awareness about waste management if such a programme is launched by anybody and also suggested various means of dealing with wet garbage generated in housing complexes.
Rupesh Shinkre from Curtorim called for a change in lifestyle amongst the people and said that one use plastic should be banned completely and urged people to reduce, reuse and recycle plastics.
Savio Coutinho said the plan was to have 10 volunteers for each of the 25 wards who would go along with the MMC worker to collect garbage from households and explain to the people the mistakes they commit while segregating the waste.
