By Marcellus D’Souza
Panaji, Apr 18: After many hiccups, the Cacora Solid Waste Management Facility (SWMF) will be inaugurated on May 1. The corner stone for the plant was laid by in December in 2019 by Chief Minister Pramod Sawant.
The Rs 173 crore, 100 tonnes will start conducting before the inauguration, according to Local MLA Nilesh Cabral and Minister of Power, Non-Conventional Energy, Law & Judiciary as well as Legislative Affairs in the present government.
Municipalities and panchayats from Quepem, Sanguem, Dharbandora and Canacona Talukas have to segregate the garbage and keep it at their own premises which would be collected by the company that is operating the SWMFs vehicles.
“A provision has also been made to generate 2 to 3 KW of gas-based plus solar power from this plant everyday by using the factory’s entire rooftop measuring 16,000 sq.mts,” Cabral said.
In 2012, the people of Curchorem and particularly from Cacora ward had opposed the SWMP and made it the main issue during the municipality elections. The then Curchorem MLA Shyam Satardekar had vehemently opposed the SEMP in Curchorem during the Assembly elections but Cabral assured the electorate that he will study the functioning of the plant at Saligao and only then give his nod to the plant in Curchorem if the people of the area are fully satisfied. He even took stakeholders including some Curchorem-Cacora Municipal Council councillors to foreign countries to see and study the functioning of this type of plant.
While laying the corner stone, Pramod Sawant declared that this project will be named as “Manohar Dream Project for Garbage Management”. He reiterated the government’s efforts to take forward the vision of Late Ex CM Manohar Parrikar. Development of Infrastructure requires vision and this Government is working tirelessly with a vision to serve the last citizen of the State he said.
“The aim of the Government is to ensure that Goan should not suffer for basic needs like drinking water, roads, electricity, health, sewerage. He urged the people to keep the identity of Goa. Issue of Garbage menace cannot be solved just with the garbage projects but it requires public participation,” Sawant said. “We should change the tendency looking at the way we are dealing it with the garbage issue” he added.
Similar garbage plants like Kakoda but with less capacity will also be made available at Sonsodo in South Goa and Bainguinim in North Goa.
The project is under the aegis of the Department of Science, Technology and Waste Management and Goa Waste Management Corporation (GWMC). The project will be set up on an area of approx 81,000 sqm, which was an existing waste dump site and GWMC has remediated the waste scientifically and disposed the RDF/SCF to cement factories forco-incineration.
The proposed plant is on the lines of the SWMF at Saligao and the design has been upgraded to take into account the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016 and the learning from SWMF at Saligao. The plant will have separate lines for wet and dry waste with the organic extruder being the heart of the system. The entire system will be PLC/SCADA based and will be monitored 24x7. The facility is being setup by an SPV, Vasudha Waste Treatment Pvt. Ltd. Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation has been entrusted the work of project management consultants. The design and technical parameters of the plant have been vetted by an expert committee under the chairmanship of Dr Sharad Kale with members from IIT - Mumbai, NEERI and BITS Pilani.