SHWETA KAMAT
shweta@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: With less than a month to go to the national deadline, Goa tops the embarrassing chart of having the lowest Open Defecation Free (ODF) coverage in the country, while States like Tripura, Bihar, Odisha ranked better. The total ODF coverage of the tourism hot-spot is only 5.87 percent, and interestingly, Goa is the only State where the success rate is less than 10 percent.
Goa government has extended its deadline to achieve ODF from October 2 to December 19, 2018. A delay on part of completion of the survey to identify the total toilet requirements, and the subsequent failure to zero upon the price of the bio-digester toilet, seems to have forced the government to extend the deadline for itself. The government has the challenging task of bringing the balance 95 percent of the State under ODF in the next three months.
As per the data available on the website of the Union Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation (Swacch Bharat Mission- Gramin) Goa is ranked number one in the category of lowest ODF coverage with 5.87 percent. States like Tripura (11.97 percent), Bihar (19.94 percent), Odisha (26.74 percent) and Telangana (48.70 percent) are ranked better.
In Goa, a total of 22 villages and nine gram panchayats are in the process of being declared ODF. However, so far not a single village has been declared as total verified ODF.
Across the country, as many as 3,63,362 villages have been declared total verified ODF, while 4,32,936 are in progress. The Union Territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands is ranked as number one State for ODF coverage.
Goa with a population of over 14 lakhs (as per 2011 census), has nearly 20 percent households without toilet facility. As a rough estimate, the government is of the view that it requires at least 70,000 bio-digester toilets.
Department of Urban Development has drafted a scheme for supply and installation of bio-digester toilets in the State. Under the scheme, any household not having an individual sanitary toilet will be eligible for the supply and installation of the bio-digester toilet.
