Half the public places do not manage waste water and litter

Over half the public places in 16 states do not manage wastewater and litter, a recent government survey has found.

The survey was conducted by Quality Council of India (QCI) on behalf of the sanitation ministry covering nearly 70,000 household across 2,530 villages of 75 districts. It covered six hilly states and ten states in the plains.

In 53 districts in plains, nearly 27 per cent households do not have access to clean toilets. Management of litter and wastewater in households was better with 92 per cent of them being free of litter and stagnant wastewater.

The situation in 22 surveyed hilly districts was better than the plains where 78 per cent households had access to and used toilets.

Sikkim had the cleanest rural areas among the surveyed states. Among the hilly states, Mandi district in Himanchal Pradesh topped the list, followed by West Sikkim, Shimla, East Sikkim and Hamirpur. From the 10 plain states, Sindhudurg from Maharashtra was the cleanest district followed by Nadia in West Bengal, Maharashtra’s Satara, Midnapur East in West Bengal and Kohlapur in Maharashtra.

Himanchal Pradesh and Sikkim fared well with 9 of top 10 clean hilly districts being from these states. In the plains, eight of top 10 districts were either from Maharashtra or West Bengal.

Each district was scored out of 100 based on four indicators: percentage of households having access to safe toilets and using them, percentage of household having no litter around, cleanliness in public places and households having no stagnant water around. It takes three month time to accomplish the task.

The report gives details of on-ground sanitation and cleanliness scenario. It was released by Minister of Drinking Water and Sanitation Narendra Singh Tomar on September 8. Tomar said that the intention behind making this report public is to have greater competition among states and districts to make them cleaner.