By: Mir Iqbal
The Directorate of Rural Sanitation, Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj has achieved yet another milestone of declaring all villages as ODF Plus. The achievement of 100% ODF Plus milestone is significant as it goes beyond constructing and use of toilets towards cleanliness by managing either Grey water or Solid Waste in each village.
In the journey of a village to achieve the condition where it is visually clean and has systems to process both solid and liquid waste, it has to pass through three stage ODF plus Aspiring, ODF plus Rising and ODF plus Model. A village is ODF Aspiring when it has mechanisms to deal with either solid or liquid waste apart from ODF sustainability whereas it becomes rising when the system to deal with both solid and liquid waste are in place. Finally when the village has achieved a condition where it is visually clean with minimal litter and stagnant water apart from the solid and liquid waste management and adequate IEC activities it is declared as Model. As of now JK UT has 4473 ODFplus Aspiring villages, 1855 ODF plus Rising and 322 ODF plus Model villages. All have achieved the ODF Plus status.
In its attempt to make all villages ODF Plus the department has taken many initiatives. For grey water management i.e. water generated from kitchen, bathing etc. soak pits,magic and leach pits have been developed by the department at household and community level. 349687 no. of individual soak pits have been constructed by the department so far.Whenever kitchen gardens are available people have been motivated to dispose grey water through the kitchen gardens.
For Biodegradable waste management individual and community compost pits have been constructed. 115502 no. of compost pits have been constructed either by the department or by people themselves in their households. People are being encouraged to segregate dry and wet waste and process wet waste in compost pits. GOBARdham which is Galvanising Organic Bio Agro Resources is a waste to wealth initiative where animal dung is used to generate biogas/bio sturry. While two such projects are already functional in JK UT, 18 more such projects are in the final stages of completion.
Door to Door collection of waste which was a concept not heard of in rural areas is now something which has become prevalent in almost all panchayats of JK UT. Through involvement of locals, NGOs, expert agencies waste is being collected from households to be taken to segregation sheds where waste is segregated into various categories such as paper, wood, plastic etc. for its disposal. Some of these segregation shed are semi mechanized with bailers, shredders etc.
The segregated waste at the moment is being managed through recyclers, rag pickers, linkages with ULBs etc. However, PWMUs are being established in each district, some of which are in the final stages of completion. The plastic in these centers would be cleaned, shredded, bailed etc. for its final disposal.
District Sanitation committees headed by Deputy Commissioners have also been constituted at district level to formulate, implement and monitor various aspects of the District and village Swachhta plans. IEC activities, Door to Door collection etc. The committee meetings are regularly held at district level to discuss the monitor and strategies for achieving cleanliness and sanitation for all villages.In order to enhance capacity building of officers, village level workers, elected representatives about swachta 1641 no. of capacity building programs across 285 blocks in 20 districts have been conducted at the panchayat level so far. 401 Trainers have been trained to dispense information and provide orientations at the panchayat level.
SBM(G) is not just a scheme for asset creation but is a behavioural change program which each household of the UT has to embrace for its success. The focus of the departments on IEC through paintings, banners, awareness programs, plog runs, nukkadnataks is immense. Innovative ideas such as SwachtaKarwam, Swachta Internship and Swachta Quiz have been launched to nudge behvioural change. The role of PRIs is pivotal in motivating people to understand the importance of Swachhtta and help in making the everyday activities such as Door to Door collection of waste a success. Some elected representatives have done exceptional work in their respective panchayats for which they have received awards and appreciation at the UT and national level.
While the achievement is huge, it is one step forward towards the challenging goal of making all villages as ODF Model where village would be visually clean with minimal liter and stagnant water. The department is also continuing its efforts to ensure through IEC activity that people are motivated to participate in this Jan Andolan to ensure sustainability of the efforts.
Through consistent endeavors and the support of people, the department aims to achieve the goal of Sampoorna Swachta in each and every village of Jammu and Kashmir.
