What does the government do with the recyclable non-biodegradable waste?

PANJIM: What does the government do with the recyclable non-biodegradable waste?

With the government failing to give an accurate reply, the High Court has asked the government to have an overall plan of action, especially for plastic and paper waste.

The Division bench of Justice RS Mohite and Justice NA Britto further asked the Goa State Pollution Control Board (GSPCB) to prepare a scheme regarding recycling of waste and the Department of Science, Technology and Environment to get a senior scientist to report what is to be done with the recyclable non-biodegradable waste. The report has to be submitted to the Court, which is hearing a PIL filed by Floriano Lobo regarding garbage disposal and landfill sites.

While the 13 municipal councils and corporation have identified landfill sites and some have got permissions from GSPCB to ensure that the sites is functional within 6 months, of the 189 village Panchayats, 122 Panchayats have selected the site for garbage disposal.

Director of Municipal Administration Daulat Hawaldar and Director of Panchayats Menino D'Souza, respectively, submitted this in their compliance reports. The Court has asked to join all municipal councils and corporation as respondents in order to inform to the Court their plan of action at the site once acquisition is complete.

Meanwhile, the Court has asked the Director of Panchayats to get clearance for pending 82 Panchayats from GSPCB within a period of 3 weeks and also directed them to look into the remaining Panchayats to identify the garbage disposal sites. While GSPCB has cleared 25 proposals till date, 17 have been rejected.

Since long, various Panchayats despite efforts had failed to have a proper garbage disposal site. To deal with the problem, the Panchayats department had formulated the "Rural Garbage Disposal Scheme 2005" for providing assistance to the Village Panchayats for collection, transportation, segregation, storage, processing and disposal of garbage in the Panchayat areas.

Under the scheme, various Panchayats were grouped into 43 clusters each comprising of 3 to 7 village Panchayats except Goltim-Navelim and Chodan-Madel (being islands) and one Panchayat in each cluster was designated as the Panchayat within whose jurisdiction the garbage is to be disposed off. The segregation, storage and disposal of the garbage collected from the cluster of Panchayats is the responsibility of the designated village Panchayat. Besides, they have also to identify a suitable land site and inform the BDO to refer it to GSPCB.

Once on obtaining clearance from GSPCB, they had to submit the proposal for acquisition of the land site to the Director of Panchayats for obtaining Administrative approval of the Government and for moving the proposal to government for acquisition of the land for recommending the proposal under the urgency clause of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894.

However, the scheme failed and had to be amended on April 23, 2007 to provide for individual village Panchayats to identify land sites within their jurisdiction and for disposal of their garbage in their areas, in case the designated village panchayat doesn't agree to receive their garbage. After the amendment of the scheme, most of the village Panchayats has now identified sites for the garbage disposal in their areas.
(an earlier version of the story appeared in Gomantak Times, Panaji Edition, Goa)