Only clearing littered areas without penalising the culprits will not help keep Goa clean
In a positive development in the waste management sector, the Goa Waste Management Corporation (GWMC) has issued a fresh tender proposing to introduce a fully digitalised system for waste collection, segregation and transportation along the state’s major highway corridors. This is based on the instructions of the government to the corporation to clear the garbage-strewn stretches along highways.
In the past too, efforts were made to clean littered stretches along highways. Being piecemeal, they never worked. For years, waste was black gold for some panchayats as well as urban bodies. As the solid waste management issue had to be tackled at the state level, GWMC was created to handle waste management.
As per the tender document, the 419-kilometre network of highways, state highways and major district roads will now be monitored through QR-coded waste bags, GPS-enabled vehicles and real-time tracking of field workers. All the waste must be collected in uniquely QR-coded bags. After filling, workers must scan the bags to record the geolocation and weight before uploading before-and-after geotagged photographs of each cleaned spot. The data will be transmitted to a central GWMC platform that will display vehicle movement and worker routes throughout the day. Workers will wear GPS-enabled identity cards, while all vehicles will carry GPS trackers to ensure complete route verification.
Each 35-km stretch will be assigned a covered, GPS-fitted crew-cab pickup with a driver and three labourers. A Quick Response Team will remain on standby to clear sudden black spots at no additional cost. The online platform will generate daily and monthly performance reports, track blackspot clearance, handle citizen complaints and automatically impose penalties for non-compliance. GWMC said that the complaints must be resolved within eight hours or by noon the next day if filed late.
The tender divides the network into three zones — North Goa, Central and South Goa. Across all zones, waste must be segregated into dry, wet, glass, sanitary and hazardous categories and transported daily to GWMC facilities at Saligao, Cacora and Kundaim (for biomedical waste). The contractors will be asked to keep 10 metres on both sides of the roads clean.
A GWMC official said the system will allow every cleaned stretch and every bag lifted to be verified in real time, marking what he described as a new era of transparency in highway waste management.
It is lamentable that highway stretches are littered with waste. It would be better to us CCTV cameras to catch the culprits dumping waste along the highways and district roads. For some, it has become a habit to dispose of garbage-filled bags even from a passing vehicle. It was refreshing to read in the newspapers that a family, native to Maharashtra, was fined for dumping waste in a creek in Salvador do Mundo in Bardez. Surveillance cameras need to be installed at least on certain stretches. It would defeat the very purpose if the corporation only clears the littered areas without penalising the culprits. Bhopal, the city that was declared the cleanest city in the country for eight consecutive years, started the campaign in the last decade by imposing hefty fines for garbage dumping. The fines were so high that the culprits were left with no other option but to follow the system of proper waste disposal at source. The municipal corporation there created an app through which citizens are given an opportunity to send videos of culprits littering any area or even of waste dumped in public places. Once it is uploaded, action is prompt. The government must also get public participation to keep Goa clean.
