The Hindu

• 165 gram panchayats covered under ‘Sampoorna Swachchata Andolan’ 
• Open defecation to be banned in the district
• Central incentive for building toilets yet to come

Mangalore, Dec 20: Dakshina Kannada Zilla Panchayat intends to bring all gram panchayats (GPs) under total sanitation programme by March 2009, according to its chief executive officer P. Shivashankar.

As a first step, open defecation in the areas under the jurisdiction of gram panchayats would be banned by this financial year-end, Mr. Shivashankar told The Hindu.

There are 203 gram panchayats in the district. As part of the “Sampoorna Swachhata Andolan” (total sanitation drive), open defecation has been stopped in 165 gram panchayats by building toilets. These gram panchayats have received “Nirmal Gram Puraskars” (awards) from the Union Government. In addition, 26 gram panchayats, which have qualified to receive the awards, have applied for them. Only 12 gram panchayats in Sullia taluk are yet to qualify for the award as they have not implemented total sanitation programme. They are: Ajjavara, Aranthodu, Balpa, Bellare, Guthigar, Aivernad, Jalsoor, Mandekolu, Markanja, Sampaje, Subrahmanya and Enmoor.

Mr. Shivashankar said that under this drive, it was not mandatory that every house had a toilet. Two or more houses could share toilets. The non-governmental organisations (NGOs) appointed by the Government had visited the gram panchayats to check if they qualified for the award. One NGO each from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh had inspected the panchayats in the district.

Those panchayats which received the award also got incentives once. Panchayats with a population of less than 5,000 got Rs. 2 lakh and those with more than 5,000 population got Rs. 4 lakh. If all the gram panchayats under a taluk were to qualify for the award, the respective taluk panchayats would get an incentive of Rs. 20 lakh each and the district would get an incentive of Rs. 50 lakh.

Mr. Shivashankar said that the zilla panchayat was yet to receive Rs. 6 crore from the Central Government for distribution among below poverty line families for building toilets. Each BPL family would be paid Rs. 1,200, he said.