Click to play videoPanjim: When Vaman Chari needs to go to the LIC building in Panjim, he gets a sinking feeling in his stomach. It isn't his policy or the LIC staff, it's the smell of the adjoining dumping ground that puts him off.
“I hate coming here even when I have work. The smell just makes me feel like throwing up and my stomach churns,” Chari complains.
The impeccably clean city streets may lead one to believe that garbage is really a non-issue but it has been raising quite a stink and seems to be Goa's best-kept secret.
It’s out of sight if you are a tourist but definitely on your mind if you are a Goan who lives in a village that borders one of the unofficial dumps.
In the absence of a proper waste disposal system, city municipalities are on the prowl for any open space like the one near Mapusa villages.
In fact Curca's famous mountain of garbage, 20-feet high and now covered with grass, was only abandoned last year after the villagers protested.
“They dumped all the garbage here in pits. When the rains came, the dirty water seeped into the ground and contaminated our well water,” a villager Shembu Vernekar said.
A small garbage processing plant has been set up in Margao on a trial basis but finding a location for the actual plant is a problem.
“We identified two land fills but the villagers have been opposing the plant,” Goa’s Chief Secretary, J P Singh said.
But strangely enough, garbage does not feature on most political agendas during the upcoming election. So, it’s little wonder that Goans believe that their beautiful state is going to the dumps.
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