New Delhi: Meghalaya won both brick bats and banquets from the Centre for achieving grand success in municipal waste management but failing in constructing household toilets which are part of the ‘Swacch Bharat Mission’ of the Prime Minster.
Chandigarh had achieved 100% target of door-to-door collection of the municipal solid waste, followed by Meghalaya (58%). Surprisingly national capital Delhi remains in third position with (52%) and is followed by Kerala and Manipur (50%), Telangana (48%), Karnataka (34%), Andaman and Nicobar Islands (30%), Gujarat (28%) and Goa and Haryana (25%).
Punjab and Haryana are among the top eight states in the country for constructing household toilets. Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu, on completion of one year of the mission on Friday said that against the target of constructing 25 lakh household toilets, the construction of 4.64 lakh had been completed and the rest would be ready by 2016.
Construction of toilets is yet to begin in five Union Territories of Chandigarh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Delhi.
Besides four North-Eastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Meghalaya and Tripura, two south Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu have not yet started construction of toilets, the Union Minister said.
Naidu described the ‘Swachh Bharat Mission’ as the mother of all new missions launched by the Central Government, given its unique nature. Elaborating the features and objectives of the Mission, he said, “Swachh Bharat initiative is different from others in the sense that this targets the minds of the people while others seek to meet the needs already felt in the minds of the people. To put it differently, while other initiatives are largely demand driven, Swachh Bharat Mission aims at creating demand for sanitary services and infrastructure. A Clean India is the most profound statement that the county can make to the world which is keenly watching us in the context of various initiatives launched during the last over one year”.
Naidu gave details of various measures taken by the Central Government to enableeffective implementation of the Mission including policy support under consideration to promote conversion of solid waste into compost and energy and procurement of power generated from such waste.
