Around 30 per cent of individual toilets constructed under the Total Sanitation Campaign, which was later renamed Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan, from 2009 to 2014 are useless because of poor quality, incomplete structure and improper maintenance, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has said.
The auditor said while around Rs 10,000 crore was spent on the construction of household toilets during the same period, 30 per cent of these became unusable due to faulty planning and construction.
"The Centre needs to converge the sanitation effort with ongoing related programmes like Rural Health Mission for effective independent evaluation," the CAG said in its report.
The objective was to construct 42.36 million individual households latrines for below poverty line families and 46.97 million latrines for above poverty line families, but only 52.15 per cent latrines and 44.18 per cent toilets were constructed in the 53 districts in eight states selected for the audit.
The CAG report also found that only 48 per cent of the funds demanded by the states were released by the Centre during the period under review.
The auditor found the unspent amount on an annual basis to be varying between 40 and 56 per cent during that period.
It also said the Ministry of Rural Development spent only a paltry amount allocated for monitoring and evaluation under the programme during the five years.
The CAG said while the Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched his Swachh Bharat scheme on October 2, 2014 to make India an open defecation-free country by 2019, similar targets were set for 2012. The target was then revised to 2017 and again set for 2022.
The first structured scheme for rural sanitation, the Central Rural Sanitation Programme, was launched in 1986.
The Total Sanitation Campaign was started with the main objective of providing access to toilets to all by 2012 and providing sanitation facilities to all schools and Aanganwadis by March 2013.
In 2012, the campaign was further transformed in Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan with the modified objective of achieving the vision of Nirmal Bharat by 2022, thus effectively shifting the sanitation targets by nearly a decade, the report said.
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Haider Ali Khan is an alumnus of IIMC. He holds a degree in English Journalism from the prestigious campus. His passion includes Aviation, Technology, Politics and Sports.
