E-Paper
Local bodies in rush to achieve open defecation-free tag
Urban local bodies (ULBs) of Uttarakhand are in a rush to achieve the open defecation free (ODF) tag as the state government has asked them to try to meet the target by the end of this month
Urban local bodies (ULBs) of Uttarakhand are in a rush to achieve the open defecation free (ODF) tag as the state government has asked them to try to meet the target by the end of this month.
Rural Uttarakhand has already been declared ODF by the Centre in June.
The BJP government in the state has set the target of turning urban Uttarakhand into ODF by March 2018, though local bodies have been urged to attempt achieving the goal by December.
“Instructions have been issued to all the urban local bodies to speed up construction of individual, public and community toilets so that they can achieve the target preferably by this year-end,” urban development minister Madan Kaushik told HT. Their progress was being closely monitored, he added.
Sources in the urban development department said around 27 towns and cities of the hill state have already declared themselves as ODF and that verification of the same was going on at the state level.
Similarly, proposals of at least nine towns have been sent to the central government for carrying out third party verification of their ODF claims. A total of 14 towns have been declared ODF by the central government so far.
To give a push to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet project Swachh Bharat Mission, the state government has allotted ₹107 crore as part of the ₹3,015 crore supplementary budget for 2017-18 that was passed during the recent winter assembly session at Gairsain, Kaushik said.
A survey by the Dehradun Municipal Corporation revealed that over 1,800 people were defecating in the open in the state capital.
“We have identified the families which continue to defecate in the open. These cases were found mostly among those living along the railway tracks, in slum clusters and along the local streams,” Dehradun senior municipal health officer RK Singh said.
Mobile toilets will be set up in areas where construction of individual/community toilets was not possible, he said.
