Goa: In Saligao, villagers fish out 25 plaster of paris idols from 5 ponds

PANAJI: What started as a humble initiative to clean the ponds in the quaint village of Saligao ahead of the monsoon has escalated into a community effort to revive the water bodies for sustainable use. A total of 25 plaster of paris (PoP) idols of Ganesh have been fished out of five of the village’s ponds so far.
“The idea was to encourage the villagers to participate in the common activity of reviving water bodies. We spent 20 days at these ponds fishing out waste, however, the PoP drainage due to the idols was immense,” said artist Harshada Kerkar who is spearheading the initiative.
She has sought help from divers from Kolkata who work as migrant labourers in Goa. Along with the villagers, with the help of the divers, she has recorded about 25 idols that were fished out manually and there are more in counting.
“Some of the idols were disintegrated and only their iron skeletal frame remains. The lotus population has dwindled in these ponds,” Kerkar said.
“The whole idea is to encourage the villagers to take up some steps to reduce PoP drainage and hopefully cause less damage to the ponds in each passing year,” she said.
PoP idols are made from hemihydrated calcium sulphate. When immersed in water, they do not dissolve or disintegrate fast, thereby causing irreversible damage to the riverine/coastal ecology or the ecosystem of any water body. This, in turn, has an adverse impact on marine life which is also consumed by humans.