VELLORE: The district administration is all set to declare 77 villages ‘open defecation free’ as part of the Swachh Bharath Abhiyan (Clean India Mission) launched recently. This was disclosed to a group of reporters on a press-tour with the district collector to four villages in K V Kuppam block on Wednesday to review the ongoing work on construction of individual toilets and to obtain feedback on the ones already constructed.
“The announcement in this regard will be made on October 2, Gandhi Jayanthi day,” said district collector R Nanthagopal. “This is part of a bigger plan of making Vellore totally ‘open defecation free’ in the next three years,” he added.
Giving details about the ongoing sanitation drive in the district, the collector said that out of the 5,17,427 rural households in the district, 3,07,908 have been identified to be lacking toilet facility as per the 2013 census. While 33,896 toilets have been constructed in the last two years, 2,74,0412 households still needed them. This year the target is 83,025 at an estimated cost of `99.6 crore. Out of the 81,242 applications received from the households seeking individual toilets, 11,078 toilets have been constructed so far while the work on 70,164 toilets were in various stages of completion.
“The government extends the full cost of Rs 12,000 on every toilet,” he added.
Project director of the District Rural Development Agency Dr Manohar Singh said, “we would like to make sanitation a people’s movement in the district that should shred misconceptions about toilets in the rural areas,” he added.
“We would like to involve women, youth, college students, NGOs, SHGs, village poverty reduction committees, panchayat level federations of SHGs and service organizations to carry forward this programme as a movement while keeping the role of the government officials in the district as mere facilitators,” he pointed out.
According to him around 528 village poverty reduction committees and 215 panchayat level federations are involved in creating awareness, planning, helping to get financial assistance, monitoring the construction activity in the ongoing clean mission programme. He said that 115 members of these committees were awarded recently by the local Minister K C Veeramani for their active role in pushing the completion of the toilet project.
In addition to the individual toilets, the project has ensured that all the 1,232 primary schools and 785 middle schools in the villages across the district have toilet facilities for boys and girls separately. College students were being motivated as ‘clean ambassadors’ to promote toilets in rural households. Institutions, business houses and companies have come forward to adopt 50 villages so far to promote cleanliness as part of the drive, he added.