Report by Badal Tah; Rayagada: First of its kind in the district a TMMT(Trailer Mounted Mobile Toilet), sponsored by Rayagada Municipality and funded under District Mineral Fund(DMF), costing around rupees twelve lakhs was inaugurated recently by Smt Guha Punam Tapas Kumar, Collector, Rayagada in Kandha Pitla Sahi in the presence of Mrs Shanti Prabha Pradhan, Executive Officer, Rayagada Municipality, Dr.Niranjan Buxi Patro, Vice-Chairperson, Rayagada Municipality, Sri Nrusingha Pattanaik, BDO, Rayagada, PD-DRDA, Sri Muralidhar Swain, PA-ITDA and inhabitants of the slum. The TMMT, manufactured by eminent company Syntex, has toilets mounted separately for men and women with facilities for face wash, etc. Once the waste tank is full, the trailer has to be dragged and the waste will be dumped at a prescribed place.
“The system is too costly to be replicated in other slums. If the unit is meant for behavioural change, it has a meaning. Unfortunately, the human waste in this system has to be emptied through a manual process. As the Govt is not promoting manual scavenging, it may lose its purpose. This may also cause pollution in a long run and waste management becomes an issue. In stead, bio-toilets could have been an alternative which converts human waste to environment friendly substance. Recently Collector has, as a promotional measure, has disbursed financial assistance to twenty manual scavengers for getting into other businesses than manual scavenging ”, said Sri Ajay Rath, Coordinator of Rayagada Citizens’ Forum.
DRDO, a research wing of Ministry of Defence, has developed a technology whereby the human excreta and other waste are converted to water thorough an anaerobic process by a bacteria which is inserted to an air tight digester fitted to a bio-toilet. It eliminates pathogens completely from the human waste, disposes human waste in a 100% eco-friendly manner, generates colourless, odourless gas and water. The water, rich with full of nutrients and minerals, can be effectively used for irrigation in kitchen garden, lawn, etc. A pre-fabricated bio-toilet mounted on ground costs around forty thousand rupees and it takes hardly 3-4 hours to erect one which is maintenance free. The district admn can think of such models in each block headquarters and NACs like Gunupur and Gudari. The industries like JK Papers Mills Ltd, IMFA, UAIL, VEDANTA must chip in as a part of their CSR, converge with Govt’s existing initiatives and make Swachh Rayagada in a time bound manner, Said Ajay Rath.
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