City to be made ODF by March 2018

DAINIK NATION BUREAU

The state’s chief secretary Utpal Kumar Singh has categorically instructed them to make sure the cities should be made open defecation free (ODF) by March 31, 2018. He asked them while chairing the meet of the Swachchh Bharat Mission (urban) state level committee at the secretariat today.

During the meeting officials apprised that 14 urban local bodies had been declared ODF by the Government of India. The claims of the other eight local bodies had been sent to the government of India while the submissions of 25 other local bodies are being examined.

A 534 out of 742 wards in the state, door to door collection of garbage had been started and in remaining wards such facility would be ensured by December 2017. Following on the request of the state government, union government had increased the financial allocation for individual toilets from Rs 4,000 per unit to Rs 10,800. Apart from this, the Hans Foundation will construct 5000 individual and 300 units of public toilets in the state.

Officials further informed that out of the target of 27640 individual domestic toilets, 5853 toilets had been constructed while construction of 8610 toilets is currently underway. Apart from this, 267 out of the target number of 2000 public toilets have been constructed with the construction of 35 units currently underway. Regarding the management of solid waste, officials stated that the state had prepared its solid waste management plan.

The work of making compost is under progress in Dehradun and Haridwar while work is also underway on the Haldwani and Roorkee cluster.

The Secretary Urban Development Nitesh K Jha, Secretary potable water Arvind Singh Hyanki, Additional Secretary Vinod Kumar Suman and other officials were also present in the meeting.