Muhamma grama panchayat in Alappuzha district is set to don a new role in sanitation. It has declared itself as an open defecation-free (ODF) panchayat. It is the first panchayat in Kerala to have made such a self-declaration, as part of a procedure to be ratified by the State under the Swachh Bharat Mission of the Union government.
All houses and institutions such as schools and anganwadis in the panchayat have toilets now, K. Jayalal, panchayat president, told The Hindu on Thursday.
A survey conducted earlier revealed that 281 houses in the local body area were deprived of toilet facility. The panchayat took up a project to construct toilets there, utilising assistance available from the Central mission, apart from funds of the panchayat as well as certain government departments.
The panchayat has handed over documents claiming ODF status to mission representatives and district panchayat president G. Venugopal.
The status would be examined by State-level officials over a six-month period, after which the State mission could confirm the status. It would be a challenge for the panchayat to ensure that open defecation is not resorted to by people, in order to get its claim ratified.
The panchayat, spread over an area of 26.76 sq km, has more than 5,000 houses and a population exceeding 25,000, with the number of women overtaking men. The panchayat had won the Nirmal puraskar earlier for notable achievement in sanitation.
Over 22,000 houses having no toilet facility were identified in Alappuzha district in a survey conducted as part of the mission, G. Anil, former district coordinator of the mission, who was associated with the project in Muhamma, said.
The survey revealed that about 2.7 lakh families in the State have no toilet facility.
Efforts are on at different levels in panchayats and municipalities in the State to achieve the ODF status, but funding is one of the problems in those local bodies where the number of homes without toilets is comparatively high. The Union government has fixed Rs.15,400 as the cost for building a toilet under its scheme and the panchayats are being allocated Rs.12,000 for each toilet while the municipalities will get less than half of that amount for each unit. The local body will have to find its own funding mechanism to support the project.
