Panaji, May 2 (IANS) Plastic, waste and other forms of garbage will be off Goa’s beaches by September, Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar said Wednesday.
“By September you won’t see garbage on the beaches,” Parrikar told reporters at the state secretariat. Goa’s main tourism season begins in October and stretches through March.
“By May 20, garbage and construction debris will be picked up by PWD (Public Works Department) from national highways and other roads. Goa has to look clean to the lakhs of tourists who come here,” he said.
He said several sites would be identified to dump the construction debris.
Dumper trucks are used to surreptitiously dump along the roads, the waste of demolished homes and commercial structures which make way for new ones.
Although illegal, the inability of successive governments to identify zones for the accumulation of such debris has only added to the problem of disposal of non-biodegradable waste.
The absence of an effective mechanism to treat biodegradable waste in Goa has also reduced open areas, in its infrastructurally over-burdened coastal areas and towns, to virtual garbage pits.
