Ponda municipality presently dumps waste at three different points which leads to confusionNavin Jha / The Goan 06 July 2013 Pic Credit: Sagun GawadeFrom a city best known as Temple town, Ponda today has converted into a garbage town.The city fathers first came across the menace in the year 1999 after conventional dumping of collected garbage at Curti was stopped following protest from locals. The dumping was stopped and landlocked Ponda city faced trouble which continues till date.The Ponda Municipal Council early this year distributed around 10,000 dustbins to its residents, to kick start door to door garbage collection scheme. But the town is still facing the filth of garbage as collected waste goes to different locations and not one place which leads to major confusion.Presently PMC is dumping all dry waste in a 6000 square meter land belonging to PMC at Bondbag where it gets segregated. Plastic, papers, bottle, metal waste then is dumped separately.Plastic contributes 60 percent of the total waste coming at Bondbag site. While bottles, papers, metals are sold to scrap dealers, plastic remains at the site as the proposed bailing machine to compress the plastic is yet to come.PMC presently has two Organic Waste Composite (OWC) units (500 kg) which are kept in two different locations.One OWC is installed in a 100 sq mt site near the Municipal Council building to process wet garbage of ward numbers 1 to 5, and another at Yeshwantnagar catering to ward numbers 5 to 10.The other waste wet coming from the market and other commercial establishments goes for vermi composting at Opa, Korparwada and also in a private farm outside Ponda.Thus there is no common point where PMC can concentrate to treat their garbage.PMC Chairperson Dr Radhika Naik claims that despite repeated efforts to have their own garbage treatment plant in an area of 20,000 square meters acquired by PMC at Kerye in Khandepar village, the same remained a dream as some local leaders with vested political interest stalled the move by instigating the Kerye locals.Interestingly, the city fathers are aware of fact that garbage issue will not be solved until they concentrate on filth dumped around PMC’s bordering areas. For the moment PMC is concentrating in tackling garbage from its jurisdiction but are turning a blind eye to garbage coming from neighborhood village panchayats.The Goan Investigation revealed that the residents and commercial establishments located adjacent to the PMC including Curti and Betorda village find the municipal jurisdiction safe to dispose off their garbage, as they do not have a garbage dumping site.Surprisingly, the municipality and the adjoining panchayats have not yet planned a synergy of operations since the footprint of their garbage is common. The common refrain-helplessness. “I don’t deny that villagers don’t dump their garbage in PMC area. I am also not aware where our contractor is dumping the garbage collected from our panchayat. We are helpless as we don’t have any garbage dumping site,” said Curti Khandepar village Panchayat Sarpanch Deepa Naik.If PMC’s proposed garbage treatment plant becomes a reality, we will surely extend cooperation to PMC to resolve our garbage woes which today is in a mess, the sarpanch added.It’s not that help hasn’t been offered. The chairman of Ponda garbage management cell, councilor Venkatesh Naik offered his private property to set up a wet waste processing unit in Yeshwant Nagar. He said “ Neighbouring panchayats and the urban civic body have to work together and cannot make jurisdiction an issue here”.Presently the area at the Sports Complex in Curti village, near the Rajiv Kala Mandir in Antruz Nagar caters as safe dumping ground for garbage.Hence people entering the town are welcomed with a foul smell.
