Subsidy hike may popularise sanitation drive

The Centre’s flagship programme, Total Sanitation Drive (TSD), is now expected to evoke good response in the rural areas following the hike in subsidy given to construct personal toilets.

TSD, which was launched three years ago, had received lukewarm response from the villagers as they felt the subsidy amount was meagre. After evaluating the problems in the implementation of the scheme, the Centre has hiked the subsidy from Rs 3,000 to Rs 3,700 per toilet.

As TSD involves construction of toilets in rural houses, this programme is now merged with the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) to utilise the available human power. Accordingly, the Centre has given its nod to use 19 human-days for construction of each toilet, besides the subsidy.

Zilla Panchayat (ZP) officials said there has been a sudden increase in submission of application forms for construction of personal toilets. As majority of the rural people have been given job cards under MGNREGS, the programme can be implemented more effectively, they said.

As per the new plan, wages for a total of 19 human-days are given to workers along with a subsidy of Rs 3,700 to construct toilets in their houses. This will fetch them nothing less than Rs 6,100 to construct a toilet. The programme failed to make its impact during the initial stages, but now one can see villagers voluntarily coming to the office and giving application forms to construct toilets.

TSD had received no response in Navalgund and Kundgol taluks. As these taluks have deep black soil, laying the foundation to construct toilets was a costly affair. Citing this, the villagers never came forward to build toilets. Now that the government has enhanced the subsidy for civil works along with wages, the scheme is getting good response.

Nirmal Gram Puraskar

To promote sanitation in rural areas, both the Centre and the State Governments are presenting the Nirmal Gram Puraskar (NGP) to the best village, school and anganwadi centre.

So far, Dharwad district has bagged nine NGP awards of the Centre and scores of anganwadi centres have bagged NGP awards of the State Government.

This year, the Dharwad ZP has recommended 89 gram panchayats (GP) of the total 127 GPs for NGP. Officials said TSD will be a success by the end of this year.

Toilets in school

The Apex court has directed the State Governments to compulsorily construct toilets in every government school.

The order comes following lack of toilets in a majority of the government schools across the country.

In Dharwad district, there are 620 government schools and now steps are being taken to construct toilets in every school.

The officials said a few schools in Navalgund and Kundgol taluks do not have toilets. One of the major reason was minimum subsidy given to build toilets.

Now, the Centre has hiked the subsidy from Rs 20,000 for each unit to Rs 35,000. A unit consists of toilets and three urinals in the schools having a capacity of more than 120 students.

Instructions have been given to GPs to identify schools lacking toilets and start construction work at the earliest.