Yahoo – AFP,
2 Nov 2014
Indian men wash in a toilet complex run by an NGO Sulabh International at a railway station in New Delhi on April 23, 2011 (AFP file) |
Children
armed with whistles will soon be patrolling villages in central India to try to
shame those defecating in the open, a report said Sunday.
Madhya
Pradesh state government is expected soon to launch the unusual sanitation
initiative, in which schoolchildren will blow their whistles loudly when they
spot someone squatting in the open instead of using a toilet.
Open defecation
has long been a major health and sanitation problem in India, with Prime
Minister Narendra Modi saying every household should have a toilet within four
years.
But a
Madhya Pradesh official said many preferred to relieve themselves in the open
rather than use a toilet, requiring unusual efforts to halt the practice which
spreads disease.
"It is
not just enough to make 'pucca' (proper) toilets to stop the practice of open
defecation in rural areas," Sanjay Dubey, a divisional commissioner for
Indore region, told the Press Trust of India (PTI).
"There
is also a need to launch an effective social drive in such areas to check
it," Dubey said.
Children in
the Indore region will be educated about the need to keep their surroundings
clean, before being handed the whistles and asked to roam their neighbourhoods,
he told the news agency.
"This
(blowing a whistle) would make that person feel shameful and would help to
check this practice."
Modi has
stressed the need to clean up India, which has a reputation for poor public
hygiene and rudimentary sanitation.
A recent
report by the UN children's fund UNICEF estimates almost 594 million -- or
nearly 50 percent of India's population -- defecate in the open.
In addition
to those who choose to do so, some 300 million women and girls are forced to
squat in the open at night, exposing themselves to harassment and assault.
The issue
was highlighted in May when two girls, aged 12 and 14, were attacked as they
went into the fields to relieve themselves. Police are investigating if they
were gang-raped before being lynched.
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