The Hindu 19.01.2010
Minority communities lack basic amenities: survey
T.V. Sivanandan
| State Government study focuses on Gulbarga district |
All households do not have toilets despite government intervention to improve sanitation
Twenty-five p.c. of households belonging to the minority community do not have water at hand
Gulbarga: The living condition of the minority communities in Gulbarga district continues to be a major cause of concern with a recent survey undertaken by the State Government revealing that the minority communities lagged behind in four out of the eight indicators taken for identifying the Human Resource Development Index (HDI) in comparison to the national HDI levels.
The survey carried out in 2008 found that despite several interventions by the Government to improve sanitation facilities by way of offering incentives to the people to construct toilets in every house, the situation in the rural areas of Gulbarga district was bad.
The survey found that only five per cent of the households in the rural areas have toilet facilities and open defecation is widely prevalent posing a serious health hazard. As against this, according to national HDI, 39.2 per cent of households belonging to the minority communities had a toilet in each of the houses.
Though Gulbarga district is included under the Total Sanitation Campaign programme, the district has not achieved the set target.
The female literacy rate in the district was only 43.1 per cent which was much lower than 56.6 per cent of the State and 57.1 per cent national average.
Another area of concern is with regard to providing safe drinking water facility to households belonging to the minority communities in rural areas. According to the survey, 25 per cent of the households in the rural areas were denied access to safe drinking water.
The survey report pointed out that the fact that healthcare facilities were not accessible to the minority communities in the rural area.
As much as 70 per cent of the population went without any medical care. Even in villages which had Primary Health Centres, the situation was not any better because adequate staff was not posted in the PHCs.
The institutional delivery continues to be low at there was only 23 per cent institution deliveries of the total deliveries in the district.
Another shocking finding of the survey was with regard to the ratio of male-female population.
In the Muslim community, the ratio was 1,000:646 while in the Hindu community it was 1,000:901