Integrity Score 170
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stink.....
It is Goa’s worst kept secret – Mountains of garbage piled over the years some spilling into the sea, some towering over thick human habitation and others just casually dumped on road shoulders, on remote beach stretches by starred hotels, restaurants, organised colonies. Over the years, successive Goa Governments would literally sweep the filth under the carpet as every monsoon would spread tons of indestructible plastic, paper and metal back into foreground.
He is the proverbial diehard loyalist who despite being a Catholic in the ruling Hindu BJP, would take up any challenge.
In sunny Goa, the only Ministries that a Cabinet Minister fantasizes of is Town & Country Planning, Mining, Home or Tourism. So, when Michael Vincent Lobo from the Tourism belt of Calangute took over as the maiden minister for Waste Management, everyone scoffed at him. Well, it seems he is having the last laugh.
Goa has a total of 11 dumps which has over 600 tonnes of waste dumped annually in them. The 200 odd villages and score of towns and cities grew up exponentially with swanky neighbourhoods and no clue of how to treat and where to dispose off the garbage and unwillingness to have the garbage treatment facility in their backyard.
The state had even accumulated legacy waste of 4.7 lakh m3 over the past 60 years till the State Govt entrusted Michael Lobo to clean up Goa. And the quiet turnaround has been there to see.
Till May 2021, over 90,000 m3 of the 1.31 lakh m3 of the total volume of the legacy garbage of Goa’s largest dump of Sonsoddo adjacent Margao has been bioremediated. Over 60 per cent waste from Sada hanging precariously over a cliff has been cleared.
The state-owned Solid Waste Management Corporation claims that nearly 40 per cent waste of legacy waste has already been remediated so far. No mean task for Michael as the first Minister entrusted with job to literally clean up almost half of a 60-year-old waste in less than two years.
With legacy cleanup (mostly shipped out and partially remediated), rapidly urbanising Goa still awaits an inherent garbage disposal best practice.