Thursday 28 Mar 2024

Clean mission: A King with a herculean task

| MARCH 18, 2018, 06:12 PM IST

jay joshi


Carnival is one of Goa’s most loved festivals, and its central figure King Momo traditionally gives the message “eat, drink and be merry”. However, with the state plagued with garbage disposal problems, this year the King has decided to work hard to make the state merrier and cleaner.   

King Momo for the year 2018, Bruno Azaredo, will launch a cleanliness drive on March 18 from Utorda Beach. The problem is deeply rooted and one must work across many levels to solve it, says Azaredo. 

“Telling people to clean up is easy, but there have to be enough number of bins on the beaches. I have not seen any bins where people can dispose off the garbage.” he says. 

While he himself works at the social level by approaching people, schools and local governing bodies, the government too must put in considerable work in the area, the activist says.

While the activist’s work will educate the local community, the question remains, how does one educate the tourists who are responsible for much of the garbage along Goa’s beaches? The answer to that is efficient policing, says Azaredo. “Some tourists who visit Goa engage in littering, but then, the government has to make sure that laws are followed. Now for instance there is a ban on drinking in public places, but I see tourists drinking on the beach all the time. And when I tell them to not litter on the beach, they ask me where to dispose of the garbage. At that point I am dumbfounded because there aren’t any bins I can point them to!”

Azaredo is enlisting cooperation from all possible stakeholders for the cleanliness drive. 

“I am currently in talks with the Tourism Minister Manohar Ajgaonkar to work the tourist angle of the issue. At the local level, I have approached the Sarpanch Agnelo Pereira, and the local schools.” The initiative has found widespread support from the business community of Uttorda, the local police and the village community. “We will be needing adequate bins, and a recycling centre to manage the waste in a responsible manner,” Azaredo says. “We have even identified land to set up such a centre, and are awaiting government permissions. Unfortunately the whole process is quite slow.”  

His approach to schools is also aimed at getting a broader dividend from the community. “We need to teach children about cleanliness from a young age. Earlier, community living was taught as a subject in schools but I don’t see it happening anymore now. Once you make the kids aware of the problem, they will see that their parents to are aware of it, and follow the guidelines,” he says  

“We want to start by making Utorda the benchmark of cleanliness, and then expand the campaign to the rest of Goa,” he adds. “To that end, we will be starting the work to segregate garbage from April 15.”

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