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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM,
November 4, 2012
Karumkulam panchayat to have bio-toilets
The coastal panchayat of Karumkulam, located in
Athiyanoor block of Neyyattinkara taluk, appears to be on its way to
become one of the rare panchayats in the State to have bio-toilets,
courtesy the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA) that aims at a nation free of
open defecation.
The panchayat, among the most
densely populated panchayats in the district with a population of over
60,000, has been termed by Suchitwa Mission authorities and Union Rural
Development Minister Jairam Ramesh as a “difficult” and “critical”
panchayat in the efforts to improve sanitation and hygiene and to do
away with the practice of open defecation. The reason is that the
panchayat, which lacks proper drainage facilities, has about 1,800
families without their own latrines and is severely short of land to
construct community sanitary complexes.
Further,
according to Suchitwa Mission executive director George Chakacherry,
construction of conventional toilets is quite a task in the coastal
panchayat, with the loose sand making it difficult to install septic
tanks. In the areas where this is not an issue, nearly 602 toilets have
been constructed while eight existing community toilets have been
renovated to help another 275 families. Work is on in various sites,
including anganwadis and schools, to put up public toilets. Sixteen out
of the 23 anganwadis here have already been given toilets while the rest
will have them in about two weeks.
As for the
bio-toilets, a Kolkata-based agency, Green Sanitation Foundation (GSF),
has been roped in to set up these on the coastal belt of the panchayat.
Said to be the first in rural Kerala, the bio-toilets, to come up in
separate community sanitary complexes, are expected to help nearly 100
families. To be cheaper than the bio-toilets set up in the Kochi
Municipal Corporation limits, Karumkulam’s bio-toilets will cost nearly
Rs.20,000 each, with the GSF agreeing to a five-year operational and
maintenance contract.
The NBA stipulates that
panchayats will have to ensure there is no open defecation in their
limits, apart from seeing to it that all schools and anganwadis have
adequate latrine facilities and also take hotels, hospitals, traders and
the public in general into confidence that sanitation and hygiene is
maintained. Above all, it has to pass a resolution against open
defecation and decide on penalties for violators. Most panchayats in the
State, which have already declared themselves as Nirmal panchayats,
have fixed Rs.200 as penalty for violation.
The panchayat, densely populated, has about 1,800 families without own latrines.
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