kolkata: The State Urban Development Agency (Suda) has commenced work for 'ODF Plus' Bengal under 'Mission Nirmal Bangla' by identifying 93 urban local bodies (ULBs) across the state initially.
"We have started work with the municipalities under West Midnapore and West Burdwan districts, while in North Bengal work has begun in civic bodies under Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri and Cooch Behar," a senior SUDA official said.
The basic concept of ODF Plus is to ensure that there should be community toilet facilities at a distance of at least 500 metre from each household and public toilets at 1 km from any public place. They should be well maintained with uninterrupted supply of water and electricity. A fee can be charged from the users for maintenance purposes. The toilets should also have a separate arrangement for children and adequate ventilation facilities. Complaint box should be placed inside
each toilet. "There are plans to have sanitary napkin vending machines in most of the facilities for facilitating the women, and infrastructure for the disabledwherever possible," a senior SUDA official said.
SUDA that comes under the aegis of state Urban Development and Municipal Affairs department has done an audit to ensure that all criterions of ODF Plus are maintained by the civic bodies and funds have also been disbursed to the vetted municipalities so that work can be started.
The municipalities have been asked to take measures for real-time monitoring of the toilets and bring it before the notice of the SUDA authorities in case any of them is found closed.Recently, it has been witnessed that toilets in a number of market areas have remained closed causing a lot of inconvenience to the general public, particularly the aged ones.
According to sources in the UD & MA department, Bengal has already become ODF except the Purulia municipality area where construction of some bio-toilets are yet to be done.Nadia was the first district to be declared ODF and gradually all the
districts followed suit.