379 Villages in Odisha declared Open Defecation Free
Operation and maintenance of the Pipe Water Supply (PWS) project to be done by the respective community to which that particular project serves. No new PWS will be taken up in the area where community is not ready to take up the operation and maintenance. This has been decided in the Governing Body Meeting of State Water & Sanitation Mission held under Chairmanship of Chief Secretary Sri Gokul Chandra Pati in secretariat conference hall on Tuesday wherein Principal Secretary Rural Development Sri P.K. Mohapatra presented the updates and outlined the issues for discussion.
Chief Secretary has directed Engineer in Chief Rural Development department, present in the meeting to ensure 100% handover of the PWS to the respective village communities by March,2016. Appreciating the performance of NGOs and agencies like Unicef, DFID and Gram Vikash in Water and Sanitation campaign, Chief Secretary has advised to take up capacity building activities for local NGOs and community level organizations. The department has been advised to involve more and more number of SHGs as coordinators in rural sanitation campaign. It has also been decided in the meeting that all IAY beneficiaries be linked up with Swachh Bharat Mission for construction of toilets; and, no IAY house will be treated complete without a toilet.
Chief Secretary Sri Pati has advised the department to carry on a prestigious campaign for persuading the APL households give up the subsidy involved in construction of toilets which is really meant for poor persons. Chief Secretary has also directed the department to involve CLTS (community led total sanitation campaign) volunteers in mobilization of other developmental programmes.
Principal Secretary Sri Mohapatra said that updating of base line survey data for construction of toilets is going on and tomorrow is the last date for updating. All the Collectors have been asked to personally certify the survey figures. However, the available preliminary survey figure requires construction of around 80 lakhs of new toilets in rural area. Apart from this around 5 lakh toilets need renovation. With this preliminary figures, target has been set to construct around 12 lakh household and 181 community toilets and 102 solid & liquid waste management plants under the programme during 2015-16. It has been decided to construct pre-fab toilets in the schools and agnawadi centers where there is land constraint. Chief Secretary has advised Panchayati Raj Secretary Sri D. K. Singh, present in the meeting to take up construction of community toilets through GP funds.
The members present in the meeting held the opinion that CLTS has been a successful tool for achieving ODF (open defecation free). As of now, 379 villages in different districts have been declared ODF Unicef and DFID and Water Aid are supporting in people’s mobilization and training of the CLT volunteers. So far 1485 volunteers have been trained and mobilized to the field. Target has been set to train more 4749 such volunteers for the campaign. Principal Secretary Sri Mohapatra said that each district will have at least one block as ODF by October, 2015. Chief Secretary has directed to maintain a district wise data base of the trained volunteers and inform those to respective collectors for utilizing their services. It has been decided that enhancement of the remuneration of the district level coordinators will be linked to their performances in achieving the targets of the campaign.
Additional Chief Secretary Finance Sri R. Balakrishnan, Collector Angul Sri Sachin Ramchandra Yaday Engineer in Chief Rural Development Sri Bhagban Sahoo along with other senior officers from respective departments participated in the discussion.