With defunct toilets becoming hurdle in achieving open-defecation free status by 2019, the Government has sought a list of such structures from the States to fund them through Swachchh Bharat Kosh (SBK) in the rural areas.
As per the Government data, the number of rural households with defunct or dysfunctional toilets are 1.39 crore out of a total 7.41 crore household toilets. The Union Water and Sanitation Ministry which is entrusted with the task of implanting the Swachch Bharat Mission (SBM) in the rural areas has asked the States to submit a list of the defunct loos that they were keen to be implemented through the SBK.
“Various States have requested us to allow repair of the dysfunctional toilets from the SBK. For instance, the Odisha Government has demanded `568.87 crore from SBK for repairing & renovating over 4.74 lakh defunct toilets in the State.
“Repairing each toilet would cost `1,200, the State has said. Similar demands have come from other States,” a senior official from the Union Water and Sanitation Ministry said. A panel of the Niti Ayog too had recently noted that the main challenge in achieving Open defecation free status by October 2, 2019 is reviving the dysfunctional toilets by providing adequate funds. The current focus of the SBM is towards construction of new toilets. So far since last one year, over 69 lakh individual household new latrines have been built in the rural areas.
“However, there are a large number of dysfunctional toilets which also need to be made functional. The challenge is to find the sources of funding and amount of support to be extended,” noted the panel.
Seeking adequate fund, the panel had noted that financial assistance provided under previous Government programmes was inadequate & led to improper construction of toilets, slowly becoming dysfunctional.
To meet the financial need, the Government in 2014 set up SBK to facilitate channelisation of philanthropic contributions and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds to achieve the objective of Clean India (Swachh Bharat) by 2019.
The operational guidelines, issued by the Finance Ministry, have also announced that contributions between `10 crore to `20 crore by India Inc and between `50 lakh to `1 crore by individuals would be personally acknowledged by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.