ULBs asked to penalise people defecating in open
Bhubaneswar: In a bid to make urban areas open defecation free (ODF), the state government has sought `173.29 crore from the Centre under Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) Urban for 2017-18 fiscal.
Housing and Urban Development secretary G Mathivathanan Friday wrote a letter to joint secretary and mission director (SBM) of ministry of urban development VJ Jindal seeking the Central assistance.
Though the state government has submitted all the documents, the Centre is yet to release a single pie under the scheme this year. The state has submitted 100 per cent utilisation of the Central assistance given up to financial year 2015-16, physical achievements, details of future action plan, etc. In one hand the Centre is pressing hard for proper implementation of the scheme, while on the other lack of release of funds is hampering the projects under the SBM Urban, the source added.
The H&UD department has sent a detailed procedure on declaration of ODF to all urban local bodies (ULBs) and asked to follow it. As per the procedure, all households in the urban body either have their own toilets or have access to community toilets within 500 metres and all commercial establishments must have public toilets within a distance of 1 km.
The government has asked the ULBs to put a mechanism in place to penalize people found defecating in the open. The civic bodies were further asked to upload the pictures of all toilets.
PNN
