New Delhi: India’s rural development ministry, which has to build 78 toilets a minute to meet its sanitation goal under the UN Millennium Development Goals, or MDG, by 2012, is confident of meeting the target.
An official in the ministry of rural development, who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said: “We expect the new target (100% sanitation access in rural areas by 2012) to be achieved.”
Only by building 112,300 toilets every day can India ensure access to toilets for every household, the ministry’s website said.
According to Ishaprasad Bhagwat, director, programme operations, WaterAid India, the local arm of an international organization that works in the area of drinking water and sanitation, while India would “most definitely” achieve the target, it would do so “by 2015” and not “2012 as has been announced by the government of India”.
One of the government’s flagship programmes, the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) aims to eradicate open defecation by 2010.
According to the ministry of health and family welfare, poor sanitation and diseases caused by this result in an annual loss of 180 million man-days and an economic loss of Rs1,200 crore in India. According to a Unicef/WHO (United Nations Children’s Fund/World Health Organization) joint study on the country’s progress on sanitation goals, India has a little more than half the 1.2 billion people worldwide who defecate in the open.
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We can help with 1000 toilets a day and 100 000 a day if required