Rural Uttarakhand Becomes Open Defecation Free
Central Government had set a target of achieving Open Defecation Free status for all the states in India by 2019. Rural Uttarakhand achieved 100 per cent toilet coverage in more than 7,500 villages by constructing 5,84,000 individual toilets in the 13 districts and has announced itself ODF on June 22.
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Earlier, emphasising on the efforts of the state governments, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that over 75 per cent of villages along the banks of Ganga have been declared ODF under Namami Gange initiative to clean the river. Under the same initiative, 131 villages in Uttarakhand which are situated near the river banks have also been declared ODF.
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Verification process: The local block officers did the basic verification followed by the district officers. After the villages passed the infrastructure test, the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation and state officials conducted a severe hygiene and sanitation test.
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The state government organised a programme at ONGC academy, Dehradun on June 22 to celebrate this achievement. Chief Minister of Uttarakhand Trivendra S Rawat, Secretary Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation Param Iyer and Union Minister Narendra Singh Tomar were present at the event.
