Swachha Bharat Mission (clean India campaign) has a target to make India Open Defecation Free by 2019. But the irony here in Berhampur Municipal Corporation is that only 8 (eight) household toilets has been constructed under the SBM-U out of the total 1125 work order has been granted, till date. On the other hand there are only six (6) new community toilets has been constructed by BeMC. Out of 30 community toilets only 20 are functional and 10 still remains defunct due to poor maintenance and unhygienic condition.
Among the 26,270 slum households and 117541 slums population only 3% households use community toilets. 59.9% of the slum dwellers openly defecate[1] due to unavailability of household and public toilets. This creates an unhealthy and unhygienic situation in slums and reasons for many diseases for the children, adolescent and women. There is immense delay in construction of new public toilets make the city dwellers to defecate in open areas.
Berhampur Children’s Federation today celebrated the ‘World Toilet Day’ in 25 slums. 250 children from 25 child clubs participated to spread the message of not for open defecation and advocated to the city government to make the city Open Defecation Free (ODF). Children organised rally, meeting, drawing on open defecation free, use of toilet, demonstrated pla card and discussed on issues related to community toilets and household toilets (SBM-U) in their slums.
[1] City Sanitation Plan, 2011, BeMC