Communities Must Get Involved To Make Swachh Bharat A Success, Says Birender Singh

All the communities need to get involved and focus their attention towards making the Swachh Bharat campaign a success as efforts made only by the government and a few non-governmental organisations (NGOs) will not bring desired results, Union Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh said at an Assocham event held in New Delhi on Wednesday (2 December).

“To achieve the goal of Swachh Bharat, there is a need for a national movement on sanitation. This should not only be a government programme but a people’s movement,” said the Union Minister of Rural Development.

The biggest achievement of this programme is that children have become the ambassadors of the campaign, said Singh.

The union minister also said that the government with the support from private sector in terms of creation of physical infrastructure for Swachh Bharat Mission will be able to hit the target of making available 11.11 crore toilets well before 2 October 2019.

To ensure they are utilised, we will work through participation of social communities as they work on the ground. There is a need to make it a sustainable movement to successfully achieve this target, he added.

"But to see this herculean task as a feature with sustainability, we should say that we have not only attained but also achieved the target. Functionality should be the base of our achievement and for that we have to decide on the kind of initiative we shoukd be undertaking, the minister added.

The union minister urged the industry to come up with sanitation related innovative technology for the rural sector.

Dealing with solid and liquid waste management in cities and towns is another important task for achieving clean India, said the minister.