The country’s sanitation programmes have failed to achieve the desired targets largely due to planning-level weaknesses even as large-scale diversions, wastages and irregularities were detected, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) said on Tuesday.
“...audit clearly reveals the failure of the sanitation programmes in achieving the envisaged targets,” the CAG report on performance audit of total sanitation campaign/Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan tabled in Parliament stated. The CAG’s report stated that 60.09 per cent Indians defecate in the open, the highest in the world.
The CAG said the Centre has spent nearly Rs 10,000 crore on rural sanitation programme from 2009 to 2014, and large-scale diversions, wastages and irregularities were noted.
“More than 30 per cent of individual household latrines were defunct/non-functional for reasons such as poor quality of construction, incomplete structure, non-maintenance, etc,” the report stated.
The CAG has observed that “unless the implementation (of sanitation schemes) is based on realistic planning and is backed by large-scale information, education and communication (IEC) campaigns to bring about behavioural changes in the target population and overall governance at the grass-root level improves, mere deployment of resources may not have any significant impact.”
Navy rapped over delay in sub refit
The medium refit of INS Sindhukirti, a Russian submarine in Indian naval fleet, was scheduled to be over by 2004. However, it was completed only in 2015, with the submarine unavailable for operations for a decade, even as the refit cost shot up by over Rs 450 crore, the CAG has found. The Navy acquired 10 EKM submarines from Russia between 1986 and 2000. The medium refit of six of them was given to Russia because of lack of capabilities and spares in India.
Train fire: Short circuit, poor upkeep
Short circuit, poor maintenance and lack of awareness are the major reasons for fire in trains, say the CAG findings. The report also found that the automatic smoke/ fire detection device in running trains are not successfully implemented. Though recommendations are made by high-level safety review committee and 12th Five Year Plan for the introduction of fire alarm system in coaches for early detection of fire, it has not been successfully implemented, the CAG noted in its report tabled before Parliament on Tuesday.