From a blind Biglahi Kumari in her 50s in Pandra village winning the fight of getting a toilet constructed for her use under Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin to a retired teacher Md Moinuddin who chose to continue his service free of cost in same school he retired from teaching students importance of cleanliness and sanitation other than Mathematics and English, lohardaga has a number of lessons many other districts could follow to become Open Defecation Free (ODF) before government imposed deadline of October 2 next year in the State.
According to government officials, lohardaga enjoys the position of being the only district in State so far declared ODF on both urban and rural households. Many of them including SDO Raj Maheshwaram, Kuru BDO Santosh Kumar, Executive Engineer Reyaz Alam and other officials claim that the position of Ramgarh as first ODF district in State remained true only as far as rural ODF was concerned. But lohardaga had nothing left to achieve in ODF now even in urban areas as per baseline survey, the core parameter by the government.
“We have achieved the target of becoming ODF as per baseline survey conducted by government of India in 2011-12 and have declared the district on those norms on Independence Day this year itself. But we are aware of the fact that we have to construct toilets not only to the households which took shape after 2011-12, but have also to those remaining defunct meanwhile. We are sure to turn the district completely ODF in layman’s term well ahead of October 2 next year,” said lohardaga Deputy Commissioner (DC) Vinod Kumar on Friday.
With 60,000 plus toilets to construct at rural household level. including in one of the most naxal hit areas in district like Peshrar and other disturbing geographical terrains to one of the most politically charged Panchayats like Pandra where every single government plan was too difficult to implement according to local BDO, district officials in lohardaga working on ODF found the task more difficult than most other districts.
“Peshrar is among the remotest areas of district which is also enjoying electricity supply for the first time post Independence. It is a kind of region which has the so called potential to show the path to the rest of the state. He also said these kinds of women may bring miracle to here community. And this is the need of hour. We had to construct even community toilets keeping in mind that inclusion of toilets in houses made on rocks was not feasible. Similarly, we had to deploy women meson, of course after we trained them, to get toilets constructed as we faced shortage of men mason, to promoting local made bricks of sands and rock-particles flowing in rivers at certain locations where we faced shortage of bricks, but we achieved the targets,” said the DC.
He added that community involvement and micro-level planning were most important factors to get the job done. “From constituting a chain of village to block level heads of ODF to punishing non-performing Mukhiyas, we tried everything and succeeded.