Panaji: The expenditure finance committee has cleared the nearly Rs 83 crore proposal for the expansion of the solid waste treatment plant that is being operated by Hindustan Waste Treatment Pvt Ltd (HWTPL) at the Saligao-Calangute plateau. The proposal, first mooted in July 2017, has now reached the chief minister’s office for final approval, said sources.Once granted, officials said that Goa Waste Management Corporation will be able to install new machinery to increase the state-of-the-art plant’s ability to process the excess waste the plant receives daily.Currently the 100-tonne-capacity plant receives anywhere between 125 to 150 tonnes of garbage per day which is then segregated and treated. The facility was built at a cost of Rs 146 crore and since its inaugural has treated over 80,000 tonnes of waste.It treated 39,337 tonnes of waste in the nine months of April to December 2018.“The capacity expansion proposal is very much active,” said an official with the finance department. “The proposal was sent to the expenditure finance committee on January 23 and by 25, the approval was given. Now the file has gone to the chief minister’s office.”Chief minister Manohar Parrikar is also the finance minister and the chairman of the Goa Waste Management Corporation.A survey of nearly 2,000 homes in villages across state has been conducted to classify the types of waste generated. “Initially when the plant was started, it was envisaged that 10 to 15 types of waste would be received, but now we see different types, so a fresh categorisation was done via the survey. Accordingly, new types of machinery may come in,” said an official with the Goa Waste Management Corporation. Accordingly, it has been proposed to enhance the waste handling capacity of the plant to 250 tonnes per day from the existing 100 tonnes per day.In 2017, Parrikar took the decision, as the chairman of the corporation, to enhance the plant’s capacity so that the facility could handle and treat waste from Porvorim, Mapusa and Siolim.

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