Berhampur: With an objective of making the city open defecation free (ODF) by December 2018, Berhampur city has reached out to Hindi movie personalities, to spread the message among people to keep the city clean and help the municipal corporation achieve the said target. After actors Suniel Shetty and Shreyas Talpade, and choreographer and director Remo D’souza took to Twitter to reach out to the people of Berhampur, actress Zarine Khan has also uploaded a video on twitter, in which she has appealed to people of Berhampur to keep their city clean and use toilet. She also asked the citizens to extend their cooperation to the civic body in this regard.
She urged people to use toilets and refrain from defecating in the open. The actor further said that open defecation was one of the key causes of various diseases and it must be avoided.
Stressing that the city’s civic body has built proper toilets for its residents, the actor requested citizens to keep themselves healthy by making a habit of using the toilets.
Earlier, actor Suniel Shetty in his video message had also requested the people of Berhampur to keep their city clean.
Mission ODF Berhampur’, is the flagship campaign of Berhampur Municipal Corporation’s (BeMC) that has found widespread support. The corporation launched the campaign to make the city ODF in May, with an objective of achieving the target by December.
Rajib Lochan Gouda, a BeMC worker chosen as the mascot for the campaign, will cycle from Berhampur to Bhubaneswar to spread the message of cleanliness and safe sanitation. The BeMC had also arranged for a summer camp to train over 1,500 students in the concepts of health, hygiene and safe sanitation. Students also took an oath to make Berhampur ODF by the end of this year.
Chakravarti Singh Rathore, Municipal Commissioner, Berhampur said, “I thank Zareen Khan, Suniel Shetty, Shreyas Talpade and Remo D’souza for sparing time to address the people of Berhampur and appeal to them directly. We are confident of going ODF by the end of this year.”
A city based organsiation, Youth for Social Development, however, feels that more needs to be done by the municipal corporation in terms of eradicating open defecation from the city. Sibaram Pradhan from Youth for Social Development said that the municipal corporation should invest more in not just building toilets, but also helping people locate them and making them understand the importance of opting for safe sanitation. Only then will BeMC’s campaign deadline of going ODF by December 2018 be truly met, he said.
Meanwhile, the latest statistics of the ministry of drinking water and sanitation, results of Balasore, Sambalpur and Kalahandi distrcuts have been encouraging under the Swachh bharat Mission(Rural) in terms of increase in overall toilet coverage in rural areas. Consequently these districts stand soon to be included in the ODF category, after Deogarh and Jharsuguda, which have already been declared ODF.