WHEN it comes to garbage disposal, Panaji and Margao have been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Conflict among councillors and their inability to build a consensus on such a crucial issue as waste disposal continues to plague the two major cities. Panaji has the saddest story of garbage treatment plant to tell.

But in an interesting and assuring contrast, smaller towns are doing well. Bicholim is a torchbearer, and soon Cuncolim will join the list of municipalities that have constructed garbage treatment plants. Quepem and Canacona are expected to follow. It is not as though Panaji does not have a system to treat waste. Over the last six years since the crisis first became apparent after the closure of the Curca dump, the capital city has built over nearly a hundred composting pits to treat wet waste. Although this takes care of a large amount of the wet waste, the city still does not have a plant or a landfill site. The Margao Municipal Council is still plodding through the legal procedure and the concession agreement that needs to be signed with Fomento is still under scrutiny. If the dump at Sonsoddo has been brought under control, credit has to go to the company for agreeing to invest money without a written contract, a practice that is not followed anywhere in the world. Margao will eventually get its plant, but that will be in spite of the MMC. Panaji on the other hand cannot decide where to set up the plant. What Mr Joaquim Alemao proposes, Mr Babush Monserrate disposes.
The CCP needs to learn from the civic bodies of smaller towns. Bicholim became the first municipality to set up a plant to treat the seven tonnes of garbage generated by that town. The plant was set up by a Thane-based enterprise under the supervision of the Urban Development Ministry. The plant functioned well and it was decided to carry the experiment to Cuncolim, Quepem and Canacona. One can safely say that six years after the waste disposal impasse started, Goa has found its feet and is inching toward a solution. It may be recalled that when Mr Joaquim Alemao took over as Urban Development Minister after the fall of the BJP government he announced, with much fanfare, that every municipality would have a garbage treatment plant. His plans did not immediately materialise as he got bogged down in Margao and Panaji. Thankfully good sense prevailed and he diverted his efforts towards municipal councils which were more interested in a solution than politics and as a result treatment plants are now becoming a reality.
The approach of building smaller plants could have an interesting fallout on panchayats which are also struggling with the garbage problem. If a few panchayats could form a cluster large enough to merit a plant then a solution would spring up where none existed. However, for this to happen, the Panchayat Minister, Mr Babu Azgaonkar will have to divert his attention from trying to build a sports complex in Dhargal toward solving the garbage problem. In the past, politicians focused their energies on building two massive garbage treatment plants, one in the North and another in the South. This solution was summarily rejected by the people. Perhaps, the right approach is to break down the problem into smaller tasks and solve each one locally. Bicholim and Cuncolim have shown the way. It is time for the rest of Goa to follow them.