Visakhapatnam: Panchayat Raj Minister Ch. Ayyanna Patrudu on Thursday said that the state government has decided to construct individual toilets for rural folk under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.
The minister said that around 62 lakh households in rural AP do not have toilets and it was a shameful fact in the modern society. The government will allocate Rs 18,000 to each family for construction of individual toilets and some of the NGOs in AP will monitor the programme, the minister added.
Speaking on sanitation and few others issues, the minister said majority of panchayats in AP do not have dumping yards and the garbage is being dumped either in local tanks or other places leaving the people’s health at stake. “I have instructed all the sarpanches to find a suitable place for construction of dumping yards under NREGA and the sarpanches who fail to construct the dumping yards by May-2015 will lose their cheque book powers,” he added.
Claiming that TDP government stared focusing on ground water harvesting to meet the future requirement, Mr Ayyanna said their government also decided to emulate Gujarat model and set up a statewide water grid in AP with estimated cost of Rs 40,000 crore to solve the drinking and irrigation problems in urban and rural areas.
