The Government’s statement to boldly claim that Goan Villages as “Open Defecation Free” can only be interpreted as the Defecation takes place openly. States attempt to boast that they are 100% Open Defecation Free or 100 % literate. This is merely for the purpose of obtaining certification for themselves though factually it is not the correct picture. One can claim to be a graduate but merely being a graduate doesn’t mean you have passed with flying colours. Getting 35% in an exam can also be claimed to be a Matric pass or a Graduate but getting Distinctions or First Class in your exams makes the difference.
It is not understood as to the basis for such a statement of claiming Goa to be Open Defecation Free. Leave alone Goa, any State can never be Open Defecation Free until and unless the amenities to ease themselves are in adequate number and conveniently located. Name a restaurant and there would be few who would have a clean wash room that is worth using. Majority have loos which are filthy and have them for name sake just to get permission or licences for their business. The rest of such eating places or public places have no facility of such kind for the benefit of the public. The first choice while taking a family out for lunch or dinner would not merely be the quality of food but the availability of a good washroom.
Goans or any decent person living in their own bungalows or houses or apartments would all have some decent toilets for their own usage. Goans or people who are well settled in Goa do not need the services of a Sulabh Toilet or some other facility to ease themselves, but would use such facility only when the need arises during their travel at a bus station or railway that too if the same clean enough and worth using. Very often one sees tourist easing themselves in the open as no proper facility is available to them nor is such information of way side amenities made public. The availability of such facility should be made known to the tourists when they enter the State. Details of such amenities should be made public in the respective brochures or web sites of the State giving them such information.
The Open Defecation is not by any decent person living in a proper dwelling house or apartment. The public nuisance has come from migrants who have encroached on Government and Comunidade land and who have built structures without any facility with such conveniences as they are so used to using the open land for their natures call. The migrant labour force coming into the State needed shelter and for the purpose illegally put a roof over his head in the open land of the Government or Comunidades. Not knowing whether such roof will remain or get demolished by some authorities they have never bothered to have any such amenities by way of public toilets.
Goa Government had provided public taps in all wards of villages which were most often used by the migrant labour to bathe themselves and meet their other domestic needs all of which is at the cost of the tax payer. Finding this facility of public taps to be a nuisance and not much to the benefit of a Goans in particular, the public taps have been disconnected but the slums have not only remained but also grown a hundred fold. The slum dwellers turned into voters and the MLAs have started listening to their demands of providing them with amenities like Sulabh toilets since their illegal structures did not have any such amenities. Many of them have improvised their slum structures and a few of them have built toilets while others have used such structures for accommodating migrants employed in constructions and in the adjoining industrial Estates. These migrants who stay in such structures continue to use the open spaces and public roads as public toilets.
Ministers should visit the Zuarinagar areas around Bits Bilani or the Highway ByPass from Queeny Hotel to MES College Junction. It’s nothing but a public toilet. All this claim of the Government, that Goa is Open Defecation Free, is just a plain lie. The very fact that the Minister states “that additional toilets will be installed including individual toilets” itself concludes that people do not have toilets and when one does not have toilets the open Defecation will continue to exist. Where are the toilets for the public in Government Offices? You go to the courts there are no toilets for the public. You go to the several government departments there are no toilets for the public and even if there are, they are locked saying that they are only for the use of the staff only. Many of the eating places nave no such facilities. So these claims of the Government is a mere farce.
What needs to stop is the migrant force coming into the State without any arrangement for their accommodation. Contractors bringing in labour for construction do not have provisions for such amenities leaving the migrant labour coming in the State with no option but to use the open areas. Drivers plying inter State have no toilets to use or bathing facilities at designated spots. How can it be claimed that the State of Goa is Open Defecation Free? As long as migrants come in and open areas of Government Land or Comunidade land is used for shelter Goa will never be Open Defecation Free. It won’t be a Goan but a definitely be a migrant who is responsible for Open Defecation.
Mere claim to obtain a title for the State is no answer to the problems. We have seen the train-loads of migrant labour coming into the State every day. Can we have proper statistics of people coming in the State on a daily basis, where they stay and whether the structures accommodating them have the facilities to prevent Open Defecation? The truth can be known not with a question paper but the answer sheet. The solution is to first come down heavily on the encroachment on open lands of the Government and Comunidade and the Open Defecation will automatically stop.
