Social audit report: 4,590 households have no toilets in Dakshina Kannada

 A total of 4,590 households in Dakshina Kannada district do not have toilets, revealed the report of a social auditing of toilets in the jurisdiction of gram panchayats.

The social auditing was carried out by the Directorate of Social Audit by visiting 3,00,695 households between August 16 and September 20.

ZP CEO Dr M R Ravi told reporters on Wednesday, the social auditing was carried out in all the 230 GPs and 366 villages in the district. Based on a baseline survey between 2012 and 2016, Dakshina Kannada was declared open defecation-free on October 02, 2016. As on March 2016, the district had 2,89,746 households with toilet facilities. From March 2016 till date, there was an increase in 10,849 households in the district. Of these, 6,359 households were provided with toilets under government schemes.

Dr Ravi added that after the social audit report was submitted, the GP PDOs were directed to check the toiletless households and found 3,937 households without toilets. The difference of 653 households (with the social audit report) is being verified by district-level officials. Of the 3,937 households, 707 do not have door numbers and have applied for regularising of the land under 94C of the Land Revenue Act. The remaining 3,230 households will get toilets by October 15, he said.

A total of 791 toilets will be built under Mission Antyodaya NREGA, 895 from GP funds, 268 using the interest earned with the Nirmal Gram Puraskar award, 188 through loan raised from SHGs, 52 through loan from cooperative societies, 719 by the beneficiaries and 317 through donors.

As per the social audit report, Mangaluru taluk has most toiletless households (1,421), followed by Puttur (875), Belthangady (863), Sullia (852) and Bantwal (579). It further said that 350 toilets are unused and 795 are shared among households. A total of 1,553 SC households, 281 ST, 282 minority, 1,797 other backward classes and 24 families working in rubber estates of Karnataka Forest Development Corporation have no toilets.

Around 300 staff of the social audit wing from different parts of the state had carried out the auditing. The CEO also said that when the auditing started, a few GPs in Belthangady taluk started construction of 300 toilets in their jurisdiction.