Cities ‘open defecation free’?

Mumbai: President Ram Nath Kovind on Sunday declared urban Maharashtra as open defecation free (ODF), while keeping mum about Mumbai. On the same occasion, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis vowed to make the state completely ODF by March 2018. In urban areas, 384 municipal corporations, councils and nagar panchayats have been declared ODF as per the norms of having 100 per cent access to toilets.

Mumbai has already been validated as open defecation free by the Centre.

The President said that the declaration of ‘ODF’ urban Maharashtra is particularly relevant for the state as 49 per cent of Maharashtra’s people live in urban areas. ‘Smart Cities’, he said, also require ‘Smart Sanitation’ and ‘Smart Waste Management’. “It is a matter of great satisfaction that the government is focusing on sustainability of this successful campaign. The ‘OD Watch’ monitoring will be useful in alerting people and helping them quit old habits and not relapsing to open defecation,” Mr Kovind said. He hoped that just as the state has been successful in realising the goal of becoming open defecation free, it would also realise the goal of ‘managing 100 per cent waste’, i.e., disposing waste scientifically.

Mr Kovind appreciated that a day prior to Gandhi Jayanti, Maharashtra has paid a befitting tribute to the father of the nation by declaring urban Maharashtra ODF. He congratulated all the members of the ‘Swachh Maharashtra Team’ and those who worked hard on the ground to achieve this goal and had kept to the commitment of a two-year deadline, set on October 2, 2015. “Another mindset needs to be developed...whether it is an individual toilet or a public toilet, we should remember to keep it clean after using. Many a times, people refrain from using a public toilet thinking that it is in such a bad state that they would fall ill if they use it,” he added.

Mr Fadnavis said that the state has built 40 lakh toilets in the past two years. “This is not a government programme alone, but a movement of the people. We will fulfil the dream of the Prime Minister of making the entire state ODF by March 2018,” Mr Fadnavis said. “Now we have a double responsibility at hand. We have to encourage people to use the record number of toilets created in the past two years,” he added.

Earlier in the day, the President inaugurated the Shirdi International Airport, flagged-off the inaugural flight from Shirdi to Mumbai and also inaugurated the centenary year celebrations of the Samadhi of Sai Baba in Shirdi.