Our Correspondent
Imphal, April 18 (EMN): After Senapati, Bishnupur district in Manipur where a major portion of Northeast India's largest freshwater lake is located has become the second Open Defecation Free(ODF) district in the state. Six more districts will be declared ODF by July 2018, according to official sources.
Though Senapati district bordering Nagaland was declared first ODF district during an official function at Senapati district headquarters on March 28 2018, no official function was organised to declare second ODF in case of Bishnupur district so far.
Speaking to reporters in Imphal on Wednesday, Superintendent Engineer (Urban Circle) Ksh Lalitbabu of Public health engineering department (PHED) who had been implementing Swachh Bharat Mission(SBM-Gramin) in Manipur said that so far 3,65,576 individual household latrine were constructed leading to declaration of 939 villages ODF out of 2556 villages till March 2018 and soon the state will achieve ODF status.
SBM-Gramin is a flagship programme of the central government and under this 4,46,401 rural individual households, 3919 government schools, 1201 Angawadis of the state are to be provided sanitary latrine by October 2 2019.
“However the state government is targeting to achieve the same by December 2018,” the Superintendent engineer added.
Meanwhile officers of the Bishnupur district administration when contacted said that almost all the households (35,842) in the district were covered under the SBM-Gramin. There are 8246 below poverty line families and 16,110 individual households under Moirang and Bishnupur sub-divisions in the district.
On the other hand official documents uploaded in the PHED website regarding SBM-Gramin on Manipur claimed that overall SBM coverage in the state was 52.16 per cent in 2014, when the mission was first launched, the state increased its coverage to 80.50 per cent during the current year. But ODF has also become an issue in Manipur in view of the existing dysfunctional toilets numbering around 40,482 in the state, the document said.
“Until and unless these dysfunctional toilets are to be made functional, achieving ODF in the state will not be possible,” says the official document of the PHED. “For this sanctioning of INR 48.57 crore under Swachh Bharat Kosh by Ministry of drinking water and sanitation is still awaited.”
Otherwise the target of attaining Swachh Manipur by October 2 2019 is well within our reach and the department is trying relentlessly to achieve the status of ODF much earlier to set target, the source added.
Other than Manipur, there are other states such as Goa, Bihar, Odisha, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Puducherry figure low in the country’s ODF list.
According to SBM-Gramin website, a total of 16 states, 371 districts and 349,689 villages of the country were declared ODF as on April 18 evening.
