ODF: Karnal clears penultimate hurdle

Parveen Arora

Tribune News Service

Karnal, February 21

The district is a step away from being declared open defecation-free (ODF).

The population in its all 382 villages have made the declaration of having toilet in each household, following which the administration declared the district ODF.

“The claim has been verified by an inter-district team, which visited the rural areas of the district last week. It will submit its report, following which a state-level team will visit the rural areas randomly to check the reality, said Dr Priyanka Soni, Additional Deputy Commissioner.

If the state team declares Karnal ODF, the government would felicitate the district for the achievement, she added.

Earlier, the Karnal administration had set a deadline of December 31, 2016, to make the district ODF. For the purpose, it had roped in several volunteers and held awareness camps at panchayat and block levels. However, the deadline could not be met for some reasons.

On January 31, all village panchayats declared themselves ODF.

“Under the Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin), we had started this campaign on June 25. With the help of motivators and gram panchayats, we have made all villages ODF on January 31,” the ADC said.

“As many as 9,000 toilets had been constructed. We had not extended any financial support to anybody. However, we will provide fiscal assistance to those eligible,” she said.

“We faced difficulties in convincing people in five to six villages to quit defecation in the open as they were not willing to use toilets. Our motivators and panchayats of the villages had played a tremendous role and persuaded them,” the ADC said.

In Gadhi Khajur village, motivators had to stage a dharna to convince people for saying no to defecation in open, she added.