Sanitation: State way behind target

  • 15/10/2010

  • New Indian Express (Bhubaneswar)

BHUBANESWAR: Despite the enormity of waterborne epidemics in Orissa, figures don't add up to suggest any encouraging trend on sanitation front. As of August 2010, the State has been able to construct over 30 lakh individual household toilets. But the total requirement is around 71 lakh. The pace has been very slow as between December 2009 and August 2010, the State added around only seven lakh individual household toilets. As per the Planning Commission report, Orissa is well below the target. The national achievement rate is over 60 per cent against around 42 per cent in Orissa. The slow addition is due to poor performance by as many as 12 districts, including predominantly tribal Rayagada, Koraput and Malkangiri. And this has affected utilisation of resources available for the State under Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC). Under TSC, the total projected outlay for 30 districts has been estimated at ` 1,313.20 crore, where the Central share is over Rs 849 crore and State share at over Rs 336 crore. The remaining amount of around Rs 128 crore has to be borne by the individual beneficiaries. But the total expenditure in the State as of December 2009 was little over Rs 314 crore. The Centre had already released funds to the tune of Rs 336 crore by end-December. A little deeper look, however, provides more interesting details. It shows when the expenditure on the part of beneficiaries stood at over 95 per cent, the corresponding utilisation from the Central and State share has been only around 70 and 63 per cent respectively. Though the cumulative utilisation of Central share is 70 per cent, in the 12 poor performing districts the utilisation of Central share stood below 60 per cent.