By IANS
New Delhi : The government has banned manual scavenging completely and all scavengers will be rehabilitated within two years, Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment Meira Kumar said Wednesday.
“We have banned the practice of manual scavenging and the government would complete the rehabilitation of all scavengers by March 2009,” Kumar said at the four-day World Toilet Summit that began here Wednesday.
“We launched a scheme for these people in January 2007 and the focus is to train scavengers for self-employment. We have started capacity building, community training for them and have initiated action to provide concessional loans to them for their rehabilitation,” the minister said.
Though she did not give the number of scavengers in the country, the minister said the scheme is a “national priority for the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government” and will rehabilitate tens of thousands of people who have been carrying human waste on head to clean toilets in an age-old system.
Underling the need of sanitation for all Indians, she said: “There is a huge demand and supply gap in the country as far as the sanitation facility is concerned and it’s a huge challenge for the government to universalise it.”
She urged experts from 44 countries participating in the summit to “develop cost-effective technologies based on requirements of different geographical locations. In India we need to focus on providing the toilet system in rural areas”.
Kumari Selja, minister for poverty alleviation, said: “Manual scavenging is a shame and efforts are on to rehabilitate all scavengers through professional training and self-employment opportunities.”
She said while 2.6 billion people across the world including half of the Indians have no toilet facilities, one billion people worldwide have no access to safe drinking water.
“The government too is spending Rs.200 billion for alleviation of urban poor and slum dwellers as part of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNURM),” she added.
Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh reiterated the point expressed by his cabinet colleagues and said that India will be free of open defecation by 2012.
“I am telling this once again in front of international delegates that India will be open-defecation free by 2012, three years before the UN’s Millennium Development Goal’s target of 2015,” he said.
Sanitation experts from across the world are in Delhi to brainstorm and draw an international roadmap to “provide toilets to all” by 2025.
On the occasion of the summit, the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council of Geneva, Switzerland, was given the Sulabh Global Sanitation Award.
The award given by the Sulabh International, an NGO headed by Bindeshwar Pathak, carries a cash prize of Rs.2.5 million and a gold-plated trophy.