At the completion of one-year of ‘Swachh Bharat’ mission, the Drinking Water and Sanitation Department would be mobilising rural populace to inculcate better practices of cleanliness and to speed up the march towards goals of the mission.
The department will launch programmes with the help of various non-governmental organisations with short-term goals for the programme that will culminate on October 2.
The department will be supported by UNICEF, Global Sanitation Fund, Water and Sanitation in organising awareness drives and rallies to motivate to share the State’s responsibility towards creating a clean and open defecation free rural Jharkhand.
“One-year will be complete and now only four year has been left for achieving the mission of ‘swacch bharat’. It is time to think and make road map for achieving the target. We have decided to organise programmes in 60 to 65 panchayats and to make them ODF free during the drive,” said Secretary DWSD, AP Singh.
The programme is an extension of the National Cleanliness Campaign which is being organised nationwide under the aegis of Union Drinking and Sanitation Dept.
The State-wide programme aims at making 170-200 villages ODF free and a special discourse of ‘gram sabha’ will be organised on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi which is likely to be attended by MPs, MlAs and chairperson of District Council to give impetus to the mission. The awareness drive will be organised at state, district and panchayat level.
Notably, around 80,000 toilets has been made in the financial year 2015-16. However, as the third is about to begin the target for the current financial is too far for an otherwise buoyant dept. The target for the current financial year is 3 lakh and the State is moving at speed 1,000-1,200 toilets per day.
The department will be felicitating masons who helped in the construction of toilets in rural areas and the department will pay premium of best performing masons registered for Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojna.
“Considering the progress made despite initial inertia because of rain and certain bottlenecks we can say that we very near achieving the target. Right now we are making somewhere around 1,000-1,200 toilets per day if we can increase it to 2,000 then we can go above the target,” maintained Singh.
Around 680 panchayats are being covered under the mission including 35 newly inducted panchayats identified in the Jamshedpur district. Even as work in 388 panchayats being done by DWSD, the Rural Development department is working on the mission in 240 panchayats.