The government has been carrying out works to declare the whole country as open defecation free within September 30 this year. In this connection it has directed the local levels yet to declare as ODF area to expedite works to that end. Although the government had planned to declare the country as ODF by 2017, the target was not met. Section officer at the Ministry of Water Supply and Sanitation’s Local Level Coordination Section, Janak Raj Sharma said the local levels yet to declared as ODF zone have been directed to speed up works to make the ODF campaign in their area successful so as to attain the status of ‘ODF area’.
The Karnali State and the Sudur Paschim State were the first states to declare themselves as ODF area, as all the local levels in the two states have declared ODF area, Deependranath Sharma, secretary at the Ministry, said. Most local levels in State 2 are yet to declare themselves as ODF areas. Forty three local levels in this state have not yet declared themselves as ODF area. Among these, 14 are in Bara district, four are in Parsa district, 16 are in Dhanusha district, eight are in Mahottari district and one is in Sarlahi district.
Similarly, 11 local levels in Sindhupalchok and one local level in Kathmandu of State 3, five local levels in Kapilbastu of State 5, two local levels in Bhojpur and one local level in Solukhumbu of State 1 are yet to announce ODF zone. Secretary Sharma said the government had launched the campaign of declaring the country as ODF under the sanitation master plan eight years back. Only 43 percent households in the country had toilets at the time of launching the ODF campaign and now 99.5 percent households have toilets. He added that construction of around 2,500 toilets and promotion of their use would be required now to declare the entire country as ODF area. RSS
