Kolkata: The state Panchayat and Rural Development department has chalked out an elaborate plan to declare Bengal an open defecation free (ODF) state by December 31.
A high-level meeting was held at the panchayat department on Friday. Subrata Mukherjee, state minister for Panchayat and Rural Development department and AR bardhan, principal secretary, Dibyendu Sarkar, commissioner attended the meeting. The deadline for completion of Swatch Bharat Abhiyan is October 2, 2019 but the state government wants to declare all the 23 districts as defecation free much ahead of the schedule.
The districts that are lagging behind have been asked to step up work. The districts that are yet to be declared as defecation free are, Gorkha Territorial Adeministration ( GTA) which include Darjeeling, Siliguri Mahakuma Paridhad, Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar, north Dinajpur, Jhargram, Bankura and Purulia. Of these districts, Siliguri Mahakuma Parishad and Alipurduar are much ahead of the remaining six districts and will be declared open defecation free shortly. Fourteen districts have been declared open defecation free. It may be mentioned that Nadia is India's first district which was declared open defecation free. The other districts are North 24-Parganas, South 24-Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly, East Burdwan, West Burdwan, East Midnapore, West Midnapore, Birbhum, Malda, Murshidabad, South Dinajpur and Cooch Bihar. It may be recalled that in a meeting held in Nadia in 2014, Subrata Mukherjee had requested the district magistrates to take up the challenge of declaring the districts open defecation free. The DMs took the challenge and plans were made by them to address the problem.
In several districts, groups comprising the villagers were formed requesting people to stop open defecation.
Senior officials of Panchayat and Rural development department said the biggest issue now will be to make the villagers aware about using toilets and maintain them properly. As the state government will not provide any money for maintenance of the toilets, they will be defunct if not used and maintain properly.
Also, the villagers are made aware about the cleaning of toilets and flushing them after use. If toilets habits can be created properly among the villagers, then it will be easier to control many diseases from which they are suffering.