TEAM HERALD
MARGAO: Is Sonsodo no longer a priority area for the government and other agencies? This question has come to the fore following Monday’s fire incident.
Otherwise, just consider this. It’s over a year now since the Margao Municipal Council had worked out plans to cap the existing Sonsodo waste dump yard – the site of the fire incident. Sadly, the Director of Municipal Administration and PWD are yet to reply to the civic body’s proposal regarding the capping of the site on the lines of Gorai-Mumbai.
Herald inquiries have revealed that the civic body had forwarded the proposal to cap the project to the DMA’s office around November, but the municipal received no reply from the DMA’s office till date.
Sources in the Margao civic body informed that though the capping proposal was mooted during the tenure of former chief minister, Digambar Kamat, it had found favour with Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, upon whose nod the civic body had engaged a Kerala-based consultant to prepare a detailed project report on the project.
While the project report costing Rs seven-odd crore was submitted to the civic body a year ago now, the ground reality remains unchanged. Incidentally, Goa State Pollution Control Board’s direction to the civic body to reconsider the capping project and instead go for waste segregation for re-using the dumping site has also not moved forward since last year.
In fact, neither MMC’s capping project nor the waste segregation exercise mooted by the GSPCB has taken any concrete shape.
