R.S Pura: Dr.Gagan Bhagat started the construction of Individual House Hold Latrine (I.H.H.L)from Ward No.9 of Municipal Committee R.S Pura.While addressing the gathering Dr.Gagan Bhagat said that building toilets in rural India was one of the major promises Prime Minister Narendra Modi made during his speech from the Red Fort ramparts in his first Independence Day address last year. The government has since moved with alacrity, claiming to have constructed around 80 lakh countryside toilets across India under Modi’s ambitious Swachh Bharat mission. Dr.Bhagat said that one of the most common complaints was the lack of acceptability and proper usage of the toilets built in remote rural areas. “Though several toilets have been built in this area, villagers still prefer going out into fields to attend nature’s call. At a few places, villagers have dumped the toilets under piles of husk. In some villages where they have constructed toilets, there is no proper waste management, so to implement the S.B.M at the ground level we have to altogether work in tandem. Some psychological cases also exists , he said that he met a villager in R.S Pura who admitted that he felt “suffocated inside an enclosed toilet” and couldn’t bring himself to excrete until he went to an open field. “At least 55 per cent of the Indian population doesn’t have access to toilets. If we go to villages randomly, we will find one or the other problem. To implement the program at R.S Pura Municipal Committee. “On the directions of M.L.A R.S Pura Dr.Gagan Bhagat we had conducted a Survey which was a third-party survey targeted at genuine results.The said survey was completed in a month. Then we tried to cover almost all aspects of the idea of sanitation. Surveyors were looking at everything: solid and liquid waste management, awareness regarding toilet usage, water storage, hand washing practices and acceptability of the total idea of sanitation,” said E.O Municipal Committee of R.S Pura Jodhraj.Focusing on the end result qualities, certain features were introduced to expedite urban sanitation.Dr.Gagan Bhagat further said that one of the changes introduced was increasing the incentive amount for an individual’s toilet from the existing Rs 12,000 to above depending upon the individual cases like some people had constructed toilets but the same was connected to open drain of the lane which looked shabby. This hike was made keeping in mind that hygiene is an important factor and promotion of washing hands at critical times, such as after defecation, was essential to prevent faeco-oral transmission. Therefore, it was advised that facilities for water storage, hand washing and cleaning of toilets may be created or strengthened alongside the construction of a toilet. In the whole country there was around 80 lakh toilets under the combined Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan, MNREGA and SBM-G programmes .One of the challenges was the requests from some villages of R.S Pura Constituency for enhancement of unit cost of Individual Household Latrines (IHHLs) and community toilets for various reasons, such as adopting different technological options for different geographical locations,” Dr.Bhagat added.”The reason is that sanitation is primarily a behavioral issue, to be undertaken by people themselves for their own good. The role of government is only to facilitate this positive change by providing incentives and assisting people. The SBM has a clear focus on behavioral change,” he maintained. Prominent among those who were present included E.O R.S Pura Jodhraj,A.E.E, J.E of U.L.B,representative from the N.G.O which undertaken the task at R.S Pura Zaffer,S.H.O R.S Pura ,BJP Mandal Pradhan R.S Pura Natharam,Zila Pradhan Brijesh Rana,Nagar Pradhan Inder Sudan,BJYM Pradhan Abhishek Gupta,BJYM Nagar Pradhan Manoj Raina,Ashok Salaria,Bishan Dass, Amar Singh Charak,Noubat Ram,Jagdish Raj,Manjeet Singh,Rajesh Babbu,and others.
