President to give Nirmal Gram Puruskar to 4437 PRI for sanitation

New Delhi, May 3 (UNI) President A P J Abdul Kalam will present the Nirmal Gram Puruskar to a record number of 4,437 Gram Panchayats for achieving total sanitation in their areas tomorrow.

The award, which was launched three years back, has become highly popular and motivated the villages to become 'open defecation free' with all houses, schools and anganwadis having sanitary toilets and awareness amongst community on the importance of maintaining hygiene, good sanitation and clean environment.

Only 40 panchayats got the Nirmal Gram Puruskar which increased to 769 in 2006 and this year a record number of 9,745 petitions were received, of which 4,437 were selected for the award. Of these a maximum of 1,912 panchayats have been selected from Maharashtra followed by 474 from Uttar Pradesh, 381 from Gujarat, 334 from West Bengal and 282 of Tamil Nadu.

The NGP has created a country wide enthusiasm and a welcome competitive spirit amongst Gram Panchayats leading to accelerated and impressive achievements under the government's Total Sanitation Campaign.

At present 42 per cent sanitation has been achieved in the country and with the present rate of 10 per cent growth in sanitation facilities the government was confident to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of Open Defecation Free country by 2012 even though the target was to be achieved by 2015.

Under the Nirmal Gram Puruskar, panchyats having population of less than 1000 get Rs 50,000 as award money while those having population of 10,000 and above get Rs five lakh, blocks get Rs 10 lakh to Rs 20 lakh and selected districts receive Rs 30 lakh to Rs 50 lakh.

Maharashtra has performed exceptionally well as far as total sanitation campaign is concerned as there was increased social awareness among people caused by social reformers while Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have also picked up the programme well.

The Nirmal Gram Puruskar has contributed in accelerating the pace of Total Sanitation Campaign which has been in operation since 1999.

At present it is operational in 572 districts with an outlay of Rs 11,375 crore in which the central, state and community contributions were Rs 7092 crore, Rs 2505 crore and Rs 1778 crore respectively.

With sustained efforts and government-people partnership, 3.19 crore household toilets, 9997 community sanitary complexes, 3.57 lakh school toilets and 1.10 lakh anganwadi toilets have been constructed and 6856 production centres/ rural sanitary marts have been set up in Gram Panchayats under TSC till March 2007.

UNI