Kohima: Union Minister for Drinking Water and Sanitation Birender Singh on Sunday revealed that sixty per cent of the rural population do not have sanitation facilities in the country.
“Lack of sanitation directly impacts health indicators leading to malnutrition and various diseases,” Singh said while addressing the closing ceremony of the National Rural Drinking Water and Sanitation Awareness Week, which was kicked off in Haryana on March 16 and concluded here. “Our government led by Prime Minster Modi is committed to providing safe drinking water and sanitation to all,” he said adding that the task was challenging. The minister, however, said that progress had been made in rural sanitation coverage in the country from as low as one per cent in the beginning of 1980s to 22 per cent as per the 2001 census.
“As per the latest National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) report, the rural sanitation coverage in the country stands at 40.6 per cent,” he said.
“For achieving total sanitation coverage, we need to build 11.11 crore individual household toilets and 1,14,315 community sanitary complexes in the next five years,” he said.
He also announced that at the central level the subsidy for construction of toilets had been increased from Rs 10,000 to Rs 12,000 for each individual household in rural areas, while the subsidy for developing community sanitary complexes was Rs 2 lakh. Stating that around 85 per cent of the rural population does have access to safe drinking water sources, he said the challenge lies in providing drinking water facilities in hilly and desert areas of the country.
Presently, he said that Centre was pursuing that every household would have access to piped water supply.
Expressing concern that most of the drinking water consumed is sourced from ground water, he said for this practice water tables were going down. “We can achieve the goal of sanitation and safe drinking water for all only if we create widespread awareness on these issues,” he said. (PTI)
