Post news network
Bhubaneswar, Nov 18:
Officials from Unicef, who are working in collaboration with the state government to make Orissa an open defecation free (ODF) state, said that Deogarh would become the first district in the state where ODF will hopefully be declared by the end of the current year. Two other districts Gajapati and Jharsuguda are in line to get the status of ODF by the end of 2017.
Open defecation is a major problem in India and Orissa is among those states that tops the list. According to 2011 census report, 86 per cent of rural households in the state defecate in the open.
Many rural and urban areas of the state are cooperating with the state government, NGOs and Unicef to make their surroundings free of open defecation.
“The steps that the state government took under the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) in 2014-15 have resulted in remarkable acceleration of toilet coverage area. With this speed, Orissa would need only another two decades to be declared an ODF state,” said Johnson Devaraj, an official from the state unit of the international body.
“Bihar and Orissa are the two states in India where open defection is very high, but people of Orissa have realised its bad impact on their health and society, and now they are willingly to construct toilets at their house.” said Sujoy Mojumdar, another senior official of Unicef.
Informing about various strategies that the state government has acquired to achieve ODF, S C Das, deputy secretary of department of rural development, said, “Since the start of the ODF project in 2014, we have constructed around 21 lakh toilets. When we started this the toilet coverage was only 12 per cent, but now it is 35 per cent. We are planning to construct 64 lakh more toilets to make by 2019.”