A bomb that has actually gone off *June 4, 2014*
l If you think these pictures are shocking, you haven’t seen anything yet l The North Goa beach belt is not just unfit for habitation, it’s a serious health risk l Its garbage, not sand that is the beach, overflows to drains and wells l Tourism Minister’s visionary solution: “We will get four machines and bins in a month”. That’s when the files move TEAM HERALD [email protected] PANJIM: Garbage filled bags greet you around most corners in the tourist beach of Calangute. Take a walk along the fallen queen of the beaches, once known for its palm fringed pearly white sands and sparkling waters, and you are sure to find a garbage bag among the bushes; or some garbage in bags behind some bushes. Take a late night walk along the beach, and you will get you aroma of burning garbage. What you thought were campfires, is actually garbage being burnt. By some chance that you go behind a shack that you are sitting in and more often than not you will come face to face with more garbage. The narrow by-lanes and the small nullahs of the once picturesque and now semi urbanised village have become depositories of garbage in plastic bags of various hues and colours. Late night these become the meeting points for our bovine friends and stray dogs. Garbage is a bomb that has already gone off along most of the coast. The panchayats do collect garbage from the main roads. But where is it dumped? On an overflowing landfill where a JCB has to be periodically used to push the garbage back lest it comes down. There is no segregation and there is no treatment except for some minor composting units. But Calangute and Candolim together produce some 100 tonnes of garbage and it is not possible that mere composting units can handle this load of garbage. According to experts, a 50-room hotel generates some 6 barrels of garbage per day. And there are so many of them and added to them are the restaurants that dot the beaches and the roads of the coastal Candolim, Calangute, Baga coastal belt. “We need to bring some agency that will start treating the garbage,’ says local MLA Michael Lobo, arguing that this garbage has to be taken very seriously. “If we are not going to keep the beaches clean, keep the by lanes clean, not take care of the tourists, and unless garbage is taken care of, no tourist will come,” he says, adding that the government has to do this as no panchayat body has the capacity to handle this. “This has to be taken care of by a government agency. The treatment plant has to be there. It has to be like a factory to treat the waste. To treat the wet garbage, the dry garbage, there has to be a government agency to take care,” he argued adding that whatever is being done now “are temporary measures and we need permanent measures.” "The cleanliness has to be implemented mechanised but some NGOs have opposed this. They want it to be cleaned manually. It should be done within a month's time,’ says the Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar, who represents the neighbouring constituency of Saligao. The vagueness in this statement raises a bigger stink. Does he even have a plan? He adds that beach cleaning tender for putting up dustbins every 50 meters on the beach will be done by July and this will also include segregation. The question is, why couldn’t he do it in the two years he has been in power? Quotes: There are places where attention is needed such as the Baga-Candolim stretch and Colva. The central government has also agreed to give us four machines to mechanically clean beaches. The file is currently with the Finance Department. Should be done within a month -- Dilip Parulekar, Tourism Minister Garbage has become a very serious problem. The good quality tourists will not come to Goa, if this continues. A garbage corporation needs to be setup. Somebody has to be made responsible. GSIDC should float a tender for vermi-composting pits, segregation, and baling of plastic -- Michael Lobo, BJP MLA, Calangute http://oheraldo.in/News/main%20page%20news/A-bomb-that-has-actually-gone-off/89430.html -- -- Saligao-Net is at http://groups.google.com/group/saligao-net To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe email [email protected] --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Saligao-Net" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
