PANAJI
Goa is lagging far behind other states in terms of achieving the open-defecation free status. In the list of 577 districts across the country that have been declared open-defecation free (ODF) there is not a single district of Goa and Tripura in the list, the Rajya Sabha was told.
In the small states and union territories like Sikkim, Odisha, Puducherry, Andaman, Chandigarh, Daman and Diu there is at least one or three districts which are open-defecation free.
Out of the 577 districts, 56 districts in Uttar Pradesh were declared ODF followed by 51 in Madhya Pradesh, said Minister of State for Drinking Water and Sanitation Ramesh Chandappa Jigajinagi.
There are around 722 districts in 35 states and union territories of the country.
It may recalled that Goa government had set a target to make Goa state open defecation free by December 31, 2018. The government has tendered for bio-toilets for Rs 300 crore to implement this programme.
According to guidelines of the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), ODF is the termination of faecal-oral transmission, defined by, no visible faeces found in the environment/village, and every household as well as public/community institution(s) using safe technology option for disposal of faeces.
Villages and districts declare themselves open-defecation free through a rigorous process of self-declaration, followed by a multi-level decentralised verification process.
A district is declared ODF when all the villages of the district have been declared ODF, the minister told the Rajya Sabha in a written reply.
He further said the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation had conducted National Annual Rural Sanitation Survey (NARSS) 2017-18 through an independent agency under the World Bank support project to the Swachh Bharat Mission, according to which 95.6 per cent of identified villages were confirmed to be ODF.
For the year 2018-19 Central Government has allotted Rs 15333.07 crore to different states to implement open defecation free project. Out of this Rs 12,970 crore were utilised by the states.
