Urban areas achieve ODF status within six months

Geetanjali Gayatri

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 18

After rural Haryana was declared open defecation-free (ODF) earlier this year, the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, on Gandhi Jayanti, announced that six states, including Haryana, as ODF states.

Unlike the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) where a self-declaration process was adopted to grant the ODF status, a third-party inspection from an agency appointed by the Centre was made mandatory for the urban areas.

Anand Mohan Sharan, Principal Secretary, Urban Local Bodies (ULB) Department, said that all 80 ULBs of Haryana had also been declared as ODF (78 ULBs certified by the third-party agencies appointed by the Centre and in two ULBs, certification is under process), something the state achieved before the mission period.

The ODF work in the rural areas was started in the beginning of 2014, while it was started six months back in the urban areas and achieved its targets in a very short span of period, he said, adding that the programme saw challenges very different from those in the rural areas.

“There was space constraint for construction of toilets in individual households and community toilets were a possible solution. To achieve the targets, sensitisation meetings for all ULBs with special focus on the ODF were conducted which, in turn, conducted programmes for stakeholders, including ward members and local leaders among others,” he said.

The ULBs constructed 41,200 individual household toilets, 436 community toilets, 552 public toilets and installed 561 mobile toilets across the state. The Industries Department has also played an important role for directing the industrial units to construct toilets for their employees and labours.

At the local level, various ward members constituted ward-level ‘nigrani committees’ to educate the community to stop the open defecation in their areas and also to ensure the sustainability.

“After this, it will be a challenge to sustain the ODF status for which the Department of Urban Local Bodies has fully geared up and state action plan with monitoring and supervision tools has been prepared,” Sharan explained.

In the urban areas, ODF work in Haryana was started in the new financial year. A special cell was constituted at the level of the ULD Directorate in order to carry out the work in 80 municipalities of 22 districts of the state.

The state government built and established mobile toilets, community toilets and public toilets specifically for people coming for work to the cities.