Govt increases fund allocation for latrines under TSC in XI Plan

New Delhi, Aug 22 (UNI) Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh today announced the initiatives taken to boost the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) in the Eleventh Plan.

Addressing newsmen here today, Dr Singh said under the TSC, the Central Government has increased the unit cost of construction of latrines to Rs 2,500, from the existing Rs 1,500.

This is the second increase made by this Government since 2004. In 2004, the unit cost was only Rs 625, which was increased to Rs 1,500 in 2006.

This increase has been made without burdening the beneficiary, who will continue to pay only Rs 300. The incentive now to be provided by the Center to BPL households has been increased from Rs 900 to Rs 1,500.

He said all houses constructed under the Indira Awas Yojana are to be provided with a toilet under TSC projects. The toilet model being adopted for household latrines is the 'twin-pit water-seal' model, which provides for continuous operation with minimum effort and expenditure for maintenance by the beneficiary.

When the first pit gets filled up, the second pit is opened.

The contents of the filled pit will become organic humus and safe for manual cleaning in about two years. When the second pit also gets filled up, the first pit is cleaned and used again.

Since inception of the TSC in 1999, the TSC projects have been sanctioned in 587 rural districts of the country with a total outlay of Rs 13,838 crore with a Central share of Rs 8,715 crore, of which Rs 3,223 crore has been released to the districts till March 2008.

The balance requirement of Central share prior to the revision of unit costs was Rs 5,491.20 crore, which will now be revised to Rs 6,687 crore.

The State share would increase from Rs 3,070 crore to Rs 4,390 crore. The share of the beneficiary would remain the same at Rs 2,053 crore.

The Minister said the Central outlay for the Eleventh Plan has been approved as Rs 7,816 crore for the TCS, including Rs 1,100 crore for the Nirmal Gram Puraskar.

The Government has cleared the full provision in the Eleventh Plan period itself, with an aim to achieve full sanitation in rural India by 2012.

With the scaling up of TSC combined with higher resource allocation, the programme implementation has improved substantially.

As per the Census 2001 data, only 21.9 per cent rural households had access to latrines.

Since 1999, over 4.62 crore toilets have been provided for rural households under the TSC. A significant achievement has also been the construction of 6.59 lakh school toilets and 2.16 lakh Anganwadi toilets.

The success of the Total Sanitation Campaign lies in the fact that the community has also contributed Rs 1,154.38 crore in the total outlay for TSC till now.

The major growth has been seen in the last four years, with the coverage almost doubling from that in 2004. Of the 4.62 crore toilets provided since 1999, 3.44 crore toilets were provided in the last 4 years only, with 1.02 crore in 2007-08 alone.

This has led to substantial increase in rural sanitation coverage from 21.9 per cent in 2001 to about 56 per cent in August 2008, he added.

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