New Delhi : As many as 65,000 families per day need to be provided toilets over a period of over four years in order to make the “Clean India” campaign a success, mission director Sujoy Mojumdar said Wednesday.
As many as 65,000 families per day need to be provided toilets over the next four and half years to achieve the goal of the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM),” Mojumdar said at valedictory session of the India WASH Summit.
Delhi legislator Somnath Bharati said the Aam Aadmi Party government would soon assess the requirement of toilets and dustbins across the national capital, adding that he would work to ensure his Malviya Nagar constituency in south Delhi is made open-defecation free.
“The Delhi government will soon map the entire city to assess requirements of toilets and dustbins. I’ll take this up as a priority to ensure that open defecation stops in my constituency,” Bharati said.
Meanwhile, Mojumdar added that the drinking water and sanitation ministry will soon be organizing orientation workshops for all district collectors across India to enable them to prioritize sanitation work in their districts. “India also needs to conduct a national hygiene baseline survey like Bangladesh did,” he added.
Attended by political leaders, government officials as well as sanitation experts, the three-day summit explored solutions for a successful operation of the SBM that seeks to make the country open-defecation free by 2019.
Drawing upon the need to make sanitation programmes culturally sensitive, MP A.V. Swamy committed to supplement such programmes with funds from MPLAD “as long as women spearhead the programme”.
Delhi legislator Alka Lamba said: “I’ve been elected by the women in my constituency to provide them with safe drinking water and toilets, which I’ll ensure will be done.”
Describing sanitation as a basic human right, the suggestions that figured in the summit discussion called for a collective behaviour change while engaging communities to monitor progress in order to ensure accountability and transparency with respect to the implementation of the mission.
Gender sensitivity was kept central to the programming and implementation of the SBM.
Senior water and sanitation specialist Joep Verhagen said: “There are three dots that need to be connected for the Swachh Bharat campaign to achieve its goal: generation of demand from communities, a robust supply chain market and enough capacity at all levels, right from gram panchayat level to the top. We also need to mainstream sanitation through greater collaboration.”
The summit was hosted by WaterAid India and supported by the ministries of drinking water and sanitation as well as urban development.