GBE inspires Guirdolim Dy Sarpanch to clean dirty spots
Ganv Bhavancho Ekvott’s sustained efforts to keep the twin villages of Chandor-Cavorim and Guirdolim clean has resulted in not only making the two villages cleanest amongst nearby villages but has also spurred Guirdolim Deputy Sarpanch Joao Peixote to personally clean up dirty areas in his ward with the help of some volunteers who are basically his supporters. Another noteworthy feature is that people have now started segregating their waste on a large scale and giving mixed garbage has reduced drastically.
On 22nd September Joao along with his friend Menino Peixote cleaned up the area around a culvert at Roinibhat which was much covered with all type of garbage. It took the duo three grueling hours to clean the place and resulted in a lot of other people coming to see them slog it out. The visitors resolved to stop people from dumping garbage at this site.
The area att Roinibhat before and after cleaning it
Again on 24th September the duo along with another co-villager started cleaning another place at Bacho. This area was more difficult to access and hence they were forced to give up after slogging for four hours with a resolve to clean it up on Sunday hopefully with more people who will be free it being a Sunday.
The area at Bacho before and ater its cleaning
It has been Ganv Bhavancho Ekvott’s concerted endeavor to keep the twin villages clean for many years now. The organization has been regularly conducting cleanliness drives to clean the roadsides, ditches and culverts of garbage dumped or strewn around them. These cleanliness drives were usually held before the onset of monsoons and after the monsoons receded.
Besides, GBE has also been collecting dry waste and pampers from households in the two villages particularly when the panchayats were under the Administrator. Following the constitution of the new panchayat bodies, Guirdolim Panchayat has started dry waste collection from households while Chandor-Cavorim Sarpanch Estefanio Dias specially requested GBE to collect the waste for once to give them time to appoint a contractor and accordingly GBE collected the waste on 22nd September.
Incidentally, in Guirdolim waste was collected twice during the reign of the Administrator while in Chandor-Cavorim, GBE has collected waste on 27th July, 19th August, 1st September and 22nd September in recent times. Another noteworthy factor is that both the villages are yet to set up the mandated “Material Recovery Facility” more commonly called MRF and yet the two villages look clean.
Earlier, founder member and former President of GBE John Douglas Coutinho was the elected chairman of the Garbage Management Committee of Chandor-Cavorim because of the organistion’s work in maintaining cleanliness in the village. And though John resigned as chairman of the Garbage Management Committee, people kept contacting GBE for their garbage problems and thus the organization got into collecting garbage from households. What irked the people vry much is the fact that the panchayats collected garbage tax from the people even though they were not collecting the garbage from their houses especially when the Administrator was in charge of the local bodies.
On an average it takes about six hours to collect the garbage from households in Chandor Cavorim and GBE members have been doing this work tirelessly and regularly on totally voluntary basis. But given the work involved the organization has to hire two labourers particularly to load the collected garbage on the pickup used to transport it. It is also observed that on an average residents of Chandor –Cavorim generate around four tonnes of garbage every month. Some of the regular GBE members undertaking the cleanliness drive are Menino alias Minush, Diago, Jose Coutinho, Mickson Fernandes, Teophil Dias and Fiel alias Babazinho Dias who is now elected to the Chandor-Cavorim panchayat. Pamela Castanha has also participated in GBE’s cleanliness drive since her election to the panchayat even though she is not a member of the organization.
GBE has been spending around Rs. 2.50 per kg of dry waste collected and disposed while it costs around Rs. 20 per kg to dispose the pampers. The cost of the labourers is Rs. 350 per day while diesel consumed to collect the garbage from households costs around Rs. 1,000 each time besides the general charges of Rs. 5,000 for the vehicle for the whole day. As the garbage is collected twice a month the total cost of collecting and disposing the garbage comes to around Rs. 24,800 per month including the Rs. 10,000 it costs to transport the waste to the place where it is disposed.
GBE has been incurring this expenditure through its own funds largely to the generosity of a benefactor who has been bearing most of the cost. It would be noteworthy to note that GBE funds come from donations and contributions of its members and not a single paisa is taken from any politician.
