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Andhra CM threatens to sit on hunger strike to promote construction of toilets
Chandrababu Naidu said the government had set March 31 as the deadline for all the districts to be declared as open defecation free (ODF).
Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu has said he will go on a hunger strike if officials in each of the state’s seven districts do not finish the target of constructing toilets in every house by March 31 as part of the Swachh Andhra Pradesh Mission.
“I will take up deeksha and sit on a hunger strike in front of the collector’s offices in these districts. I am serious. I will see whether at least my fasting would shame the officials and force them to complete the construction of toilets,” Naidu said on Thursday evening.
He was speaking at the Janma Bhoomi-Maa Vooru (My Motherland, My village) programme at Ichchapuram town in Srikakulam district. The programme is aimed at taking the administration to the villages to know their problems.
Naidu said the government had set March 31 as the deadline for all the districts to be declared as open defecation free (ODF).
“However, only six districts – Krishna, West Godavari, East Godavari, Guntur, Prakasam and Nellore – could achieve the target of 100% construction of individual latrines,” he said.
“After March 31, I will visit every village which does not have individual latrines. I will stay put there and take up fasting till the officials complete the construction of latrine in every house. I will go back to Amaravati only after ensuring that the target is achieved,” the chief minister said.
Naidu said individual latrine is a symbol of self-respect of people, especially women, and reminded people that there have been examples of women spending their own money to build toilets for their houses.
“In Bihar, a woman sold her mangalsutra to mobilise funds for the construction of a latrine. In our state, there are mobile phones in every house, but there are no individual toilets,” he said.
Naidu called upon the people to take up the construction of toilets as a mass movement.
“Take out a funeral procession of tumblers used for open defecation and conduct the last rites for them once in a week. Take up a massive campaign to make the villages open defecation free,” he advised.
The officials and the staff must be off their seats on every third Saturday and visit the nearby villages and slums to organise awareness camps on ODF, he added.
Naidu was the convenor of the sub-group of chief ministers of Bihar, Delhi, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Mizoram, Sikkim, West Bengal and Uttarakhand on Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan constituted in March 2015.
The sub-group was asked to examine financial requirements for the comprehensive implementation of the Swachh Bharat Mission and suggest measures for meeting budgetary needs.
Swachh Bharat Mission, or Clean India Mission, is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet programme that he launched in 2014 to modernise India’s sanitation within five years.
Naidu launched Swachh Andhra Mission on the occasion of the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi last year.
