Bhubaneswar : Rural Sanitation campaign under Swatchh Bharat Mission has gathered momentum in Odisha with a quantum jump in individual household latrine ( IHHL) coverage growing by 44% over last 3 years. This was known from a high level review meeting taken by Chief Secretary Odisha Sri Aditya Prasad Padhi and Union Secretary Drinking Water & Sanitation, Sri Parameswaran Iyer held in secretariat conference hall today wherein Principal Secretary Panchayati Raj Sri Deoranjan Kumar Singh outlined the issues for discussion. The district wise review was done over the video conferencing in which the Collectors along with district level officials presented updates from their respective districts. The review showed that the IHHL coverage in rural areas of the State by end of January, 2018 reached 56% against the background of 12% coverage as per baseline survey of October, 2014. Reviewing the progress of implementation at the ground level Chief Secretary Sri Padhi directed all the Collectors to scale up their coverage to at least 65% by March, 2018. Principal Secretary Panchayati Raj & Drinking Water Sri Singh advised the collectors to utilize the same manpower deployed for implementation of rural housing. The strategy of implementation, added Sri Singh, “ should be same with the construction and completion of the dwelling houses”. Chief Secretary Sri Padhi clarified that toilets being constructed with PAMY (G) houses be funded from MGNRGES. It was also known from the review that around 7715 villages in 30 districts of the State have been declared ODF. Union Secretary Sri Iyer advised to complete ODF status verification of these villages within 90 days from the day of ODF declaration and upload the results on the website. Chief Secretary Sri Padhi directed to focus on behavior change of the people and sustainability of the campaign. Principal Secretary Sri Singh asked the Collectors to engage at least 4 swachhagrahis in each Panchayat for carrying forward the campaign and sustainability in ODF status. Available data show, after validation of the base line survey through a rigorous method of scrutiny, target has been set to cover around 82.34 lakh households under IHHL scheme. Out of that more than 46.18 lakh of HHs have been covered by end of January, 2018. So far, Deogarh district has been declared ODF district in the State. Target was set to make 5 more districts ODF in different phases by end of June, 2018. This perspective list included the districts like Jharsuguda, Balasore, Gajpati, Sambalpur and Sonepur.
Director General Special Projects, Govt of India Sri Akshya Rout, Director Drinking Water & Sanitation Mission Odisha Smt Roopa Mishra, Engineer in Chief Sri Bhgaban Sahoo, Superintending Engineer Sri Abhaya Kumar Biswal, along with other senior members of the department participated in the review.
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