Uttar Pradesh may have to wait a few months more before it is declared an open defecation free (ODF) state despite claiming to have already achieved over 99% individual household latrine (IHL) coverage.
The state failed to meet the national ODF deadline on Tuesday, having shifted self-imposed deadlines at least twice earlier, the first time on October 2, 2017 and the second on December 31, 2017. The government was expected to declare the state ODF on the occasion of the Gandhi Jayanti, but the authorities dragged their feet at the eleventh hour after they found some practical problems.
Now, chief minister Yogi Adityanath has set a fresh deadline, asking the authorities to declare the state ODF by November-end. But insiders feel this mission may again be impossible to accomplish.
Director, UP Swachhta Mission (Rural), Akash Deep said the deadline was shifted to November because the government did not want to make a half-baked announcement since verification of thousands of villages was still underway. “We will try our best to meet the November deadline as set by the chief minister,” he said.
People familiar with the matter said it may still take another six months or even more for UP to be ODF with each and every household having a personal toilet.
As per the government statistics, the IHL coverage in UP was already 99.67% which is higher than the national average of 94.6%. But here is a big catch.
“This IHL coverage is against the number of households identified in the baseline survey done in 2012 whereas more than 30 lakh more rural households that were not included in the survey then need individual latrines,” sources said, adding, “This is one of the reasons coming in the way of UP being declared ODF.”
Deep said the survey to identify households not mentioned in the baseline survey was on and once the number of such households was known, a request will be sent to the Central government for the additional funds to build individual latrines for such houses.
The UP has built more than 1.71 crore toilets, increasing the individual household latrine coverage by 68.16% since the October 2014 when the Modi government at the Centre launched ‘Swachhata Mission’. Of them, more than 84,000 were built during the current year (2018-2019) only though the complaints about their quality were also received.
A website of the union ministry of drinking water and sanitation said of the 58,000 village panchayats in UP, 46,324 have self-declared ODF though only 13503 of them have been verified so far. Out of the 850 blocks, only 220 are ODF till date and 14 of the total 76 districts are ODF till now.
Deep said the ODF status was fast changing as villages and districts were being declared ODF every hour and every day as their verification reports were received. He said ODF declaration was getting delayed because of one or two villages, for example, which were still to have a latrine or a few villages in a district not yet ready for ODF. “Otherwise, the individual household coverage in the state has already crossed 99% and some states chose to declare themselves ODF though their coverage was below ours,” he said.
First Published: Oct 03, 2018 12:55 IST
