Odisha among top 5 states with open defecation free Plus villages

BHUBANESWAR: Odisha is among the top five performing states where maximum number of villages have been declared open defecation free (ODF)-Plus. Other top performing states are Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh. Odisha has 10,861 ODF Plus villages till Friday.
Swachh Bharat Mission Grameen (SBM-G), the flagship programme of the Centre, on Friday recorded another milestone of more than one lakh villages declaring themselves as ODF (open defecation free) Plus.
These villages have maintained their ODF status and have systems in place for managing solid or liquid waste.
SBM was launched eight years ago. On October 2, 2019, the Centre had announced that rural India was now open-defecation free. However, it was just the beginning of the mission. The most important thing was to ensure "sampoorn swachhata" or complete cleanliness, to make the country's villages ODF Plus.
The second phase of the SBM-G is about appropriately managing all types of waste that will not only make villages clean, but also generate incomes for rural households. There are three categories in ODF Plus.
One: ODF Plus-Aspiring category has arrangements for either solid waste management (SWM) or liquid waste management (LWM) besides having access to sanitation through individual household latrines. Two: ODF Plus-Rising has arrangements for both LWM and SWM in addition to the criteria in Aspiring. Three: ODF Plus-Model has all the above and where information, education and communication (IEC) messages are prominently disseminated and displayed.
So far, Odisha has 10,845 ODF Plus-Model villages, five ODF Plus-Aspiring villages and 11 ODF Plus-Rising villages. As many as 21 villages have been included in the ODF Plus-Model category during the last seven days, official sources said.
The government has set a target to fulfil the dream of a Sampoorn, Swachh and Swasth Bharat by 2024-25.