New Year Magic Wand! Arunachal swells with pride becoming North East’s second ODF state

Itanagar, January 1: Arunachal Pradesh became ‘Open Defecation Free’. Overwhelmed by this success, Chief Minister expressed his joy saying that “Congratulations Arunachal for achieving 100% #OpenDefecationFree. As promised our state is now ODF 1yr & 10 months ahead of National Target. I extend my thanks to team of officers, staffs & people of Arunachal who have made it possible.” 

By achieving this status, Arunachal has become the second state in North-East after Sikkim to achieve ODF status. Upper Subansiri, Siang and Changlang- were declared Open Defecation Free (ODF) officially today, an official release said.

 

The project undertaken under Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin) SBM (G) saw the light of day only after the state government extended an incentive of Rs 8,000 per toilet. This is in addition to the Centres support of Rs 12,000, raising the grant for constructing a toilet to Rs 20,000. Meanwhile the state government also launched Swachh Arunachal Mission on October 2 this year at Tawang.

"I am personally overwhelmed to find people participating in construction of toilets even in remote villages along the international borders like Vijaynagar, Taksing, Pipsorang despite communication bottlenecks requiring strenuous trekking for days together carrying construction materials along with ration on head load," Chief Minister Pema Khandu said.

The big thing about the achieving the status was that the state government had cut short the national ODF target by one year and ten months ahead of the national target and set 31 December, 2017, as the final target to achieve ODF status in Arunachal Pradesh. The national deadline is 2 October, 2019.