No toilet, no ration, district official warns BPL families

Sat Singh

Tribune News Service

Bhiwani, June 24

Ration to the BPL families will be snapped from September if they fail to construct toilets at their homes under the Prime Minister’s Open Defecation Free (ODF) Campaign. This was stated by Additional Deputy Commissioner Dhirendra Khadgata today.

“The ration depot holders will be directed to issue ration to only those having approval stamp of toilets at their home, others will have to wait till they obtain it by constructing toilets,” he said. ADC Khadgata said, “The panchayats achieving open defecation free villages will be felicitated by the administration and given additional money for development.”

Om Prakash, secretary, CPM, said the government cannot ban ration to families as it was their fundamental right.

“The administration seems to be unaware of the ground realities. Several BPL families have been running pillar to post to avail the subsidy for construction of toilet but they were caught in red tapism of the government offices,” he said.

He said the decision would impact a substantial number of families in the district.

Mahinder Kumar, a BPL card holder from Alampur village, claimed that he had been struggling to get a toilet construction file approved for the last three months at Block Development Office but officials were not clearing it by quoting silly objections.

“A middleman keeps contacting us to get the file approved in lieu of Rs 1, 000,” he said.

Awareness drive   

Ambala: The district administration is geared up to make Ambala open defecation-free (ODF) and has decided to implement the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) programme as a part of a four-month campaign in the district. Additional Deputy Commissioner Girish Arora said: “A four-month campaign, starting from the first week of July, will run in Ambala to make it open defecation-free. Government officials, NGOs, youth clubs, farmer groups and students will be included in the campaign to educate people about the importance of using toilets.” “To run this campaign successfully, a community-led sanitation programme will be implemented in the district. Task forces will also be constituted and the volunteers of the forces will be given training to create awareness among public. The district will achieve the ODF status by the end of October”, he added.