Dear All, I am sure all of the Goanetters are siezed of the problem with the press full of stories of villages, housing boards refusing to accept garbage from municipalities and other panchayats. The earlier plan to set up garbage disposal plants in two villages catering to the two districts of Goa has fallen through and the latest one creating village clusters seems to be following the same path.
The garbage dump and its attendant stink is now as ubiquitous as the freshly painted crosses, temples and chapels along the roadside. While the Mapusa municipal council is in a quandry because of lack of a landfill/dumping site. The Corporation of the City of Panaji and the adjoining villages of Merces, Taligao, St Cruz will soon be facing the same problem because Curca will soon be refusing to take anymore garbage as its landfill sites are full and its villagers are complaining of the stench over a radius of 2 km and pollution of its groundwater. As against this bleak scenario of Goa slowly but irrevocably turning into a huge garbage dump with plastic not leaves lying across our fields there seems to be no public outcry as say the rave parties on our beaches or helmets. Part of the reason is that the average Goan percieves garbage to be someone elses problem with the average charlie chucking out his refuse packed in a .5 micron plastic bag into the field from his car on his way to work. The other part seems to be the buck passing local bodies pass it upwards and governments devise elaborate non workable legislation in reponse.While governments set up corporations for everything from infrastructure to education it has thought it wise to tag the responsibility of garbage to an owerworked and under motivated and under funded panchayat secretary and sarpanch.Perhaps the stink associated with garbage would deter aspiring MLAs from the job of chairman!! Roland Martins of GoaCan has wisely stated that the disposal and segration should be at the point of creation and awareness programmes on recycling, composting, vermiculture for the average householder should be part of school curiculums and DD programs. I and other members of Goanet would like to know how other villages are coping and would like to interact with NGOs/websites addressing this problem. Thanks Pascal Goa
