The Hindu 02.12.2010
Sanitation drive launched
Staff Reporter
| Aim at open defecation-free status for West Bengal |
KOLKATA: A week-long total sanitation campaign, organised by the State's Panchayat and Rural Development department and the UNICEF, was launched by the Governor, M K Narayanan, here on Wednesday with the aim of ensuring open defecation-free status in West Bengal by 2012 and raising public awareness of the benefits of safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene.
While State has a comparatively positive record of 80 per cent sanitation coverage in both rural and urban areas since it took up the project in 2000, the pace of progress in certain districts such as Purulia, Bankura, Birbhum, Murshidabad, Dakshin Dinajpur and the Siliguri sub-division of Darjeeling district is still quite dismal. Coverage in Purulia is as low as 20 per cent.
Lauding the efforts of both the State Government and the UNICEF to make the Centrally-sponsored programme a success, Mr. Narayanan pointed out that motivating people to adopt cleaner behavioural habits as well as encouraging them to build cost-effective and sustainable toilets are the key necessities to reach the 2012 goal.
Referring to Mahatma Gandhi's belief that the State should take up the responsibility of ensuring proper sanitation and cleanliness of its people, Mr. Narayanan said that the result of several corresponding programmes taken up since Independence have been “mixed” as some lesser-developed nations have surpassed India in ensuring better sanitation facilities.
UNICEF's State representative Lori Calvo emphasised on the use of clean drinking water, toilets and soap to cut down the spiralling number of diarrhoea cases amongst children in the State as well as to check the re-emergence of polio cases due to poor sanitation.
She further stressed on the necessity of proper sanitation facilities at schools which ensures retention of adolescent girls in classes and in turn prevents early marriage and childbirth.
State's Minister for Health and Family Affairs Suryakanta Misra said that apart from building sanitary toilets in rural households and primary schools, regular scrutiny should be done to check whether the toilets are actually used.
He also advocated breastfeeding of children below the age of one year and developing the habit of washing hands with soap in children to check the large number of diarrhoea cases.
