Karnataka Declares Five Districts and 20 Taluks as Open Defecation Free

BENGALURU: With the aim of improving the sanitation in communities, open-defecation free (ODF) project is implemented in villages and places where people still use open area instead of lavatory. This project will encourage many different villages to hit their threshold in order to bag the ODF certification.

The Karnataka government identifies few places within state as ODF after thorough survey. Places that have stopped the practice of open defecation include Bengaluru Rural, Bengaluru Urban, Mangaluru (Dakshina Kannada), Udupi and Kodagu districts, with 20 taluks as well as 1,000 gram panchayats.

Quality Council of India (QCI) declares Mysuru as an ODF after carrying out thorough research across 73 cities that was commissioned by the Union urban development ministry. But Mysuru couldn’t make into the list, since QCI is not part of the state government.

Those five districts and taluks that were declared as ODF were honored by the government and were asked to keep up the development goals, on Sunday. As per the survey, eight other districts have accomplished over 70 pct sanitation and stated 64 Pct of places in the state have toilets now.

According to reports, Karnataka has a better average in sanitation coverage than national coverage with a lead of 9.23 Pct. Moreover, number of ODF gram panchayats in the state has increased from 4.7 pct to 16.6 pct, again better than national average of 14.9 pct.  

Unicef has embraced Karnataka state government for playing a crucial role in achieving sanitation coverage by delivering technical assistance.

Officials acknowledged that Unicef has played a "pivotal role in supporting the district and state-level administration by providing technical assistance, among other things", and helped the state achieve sanitation coverage.

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