Hyderabad, Dec. 16: Around 85 per cent of the rural population in the state still defecates in the open despite efforts made to end the practice through the total sanitation campaign. Though 58 per cent of the the rural areas have toilets, their use is only around 30 per cent. The Union government had instituted the Nirmal Gram Puraskar awards for gram panchayats achieving 100 per cent sanitation.
Of the total 21,895 gram panchayats, only 813 have met NGP guidelines. None of the districts has achieved 100 per cent sanitation. On par with the NGP awards, the state government also instituted the Shubram awards from 2007-08 for the cleanest gram panchayat, mandal and district.
In all, 285 gram panchayats in the state received the awards this year from the Chief Minister, Dr Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy. The rural water supply minister, Mr P. Venkateswara Rao, said that the results were far from satisfactory since given the fact that eight years had passed since the total sanitation campaign had been started out. A study revealed that rural folk had many prejudices against using toilets.
"Around 30 per cent of the people feared that it would fill up, 17 per cent said there was no water supply, 13 per cent hated the smell and eight per cent felt the toilets were inconvenient," said Mr Mritunjay Sahu, principal secretary (rural water supply and sanitation).
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