As the national cleanliness campaign completes its five years on October, 2, 2019, the Union Jal Shakti Ministry on Wednesday kicked off a 15-day survey, Swachchh Sarvekshan Grameen-2019 to cover 17,450 villages in 698 districts across the country.
The aim is to provide national ranking of all districts and States on the basis of quantitative and qualitative sanitation (Swachchhta) parameters, said a senior official from the Ministry.
Feedback will be garnered from over 87,250 public places including schools, anganwadis and public health centres, haat/bazaars/religious places in the identified villages. Around 250,000 citizens will be interviewed for their feedback on SBM related issues. Also citizens will be mobilised to provide feedback on sanitation relation related issues online using an application developed for the purpose, said the official from the Ministry.
A detailed protocol has been developed to guide the ranking of districts basis their performance on key quality and quantitative parameters.
The official said the maiden exercise by Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Ministry of Jal Shakti to rank states and districts on key sanitation parameters through a “Swachh Survekshan Grameen” in 2018 covered 698 districts and more than 7000 villages. The Survekshan generated huge enthusiasm across districts and generated huge attention from all stakeholders and common citizens in particular. More than a crore citizen provided direct feedback on various sanitation parameters in their settings using the Swachh Survekshan App developed by the Ministry.
Intense IEC and sanitation improvement activities were carried out by people to improve the sanitation status of their villages. SSG 2018 also fostered a spirit of healthy competition among villages to improve their service delivery to citizens, towards creating cleaner villages.
On Tuesday, the Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri had launched the Swachh Survekshan 2020, the fifth edition of the annual cleanliness survey. He had claimed that as many as 4284 cities in 24 states have been certified Open Defecation-Free (ODF) by now. The remaining 150 is expected to be certified ODF by October 2, this year. More than 98 per cent of our toilet construction targets have been met. We are on track to achieve our sanitation targets, Puri had said.