Mangaluru : A special team has been constituted for cross-verification of Open Defecation Free (ODF) villages under social auditing of household toilets in Dakshina Kannada district.

Social Auditing wing district coordinator Rakshith Jain said that social auditing of household toilets in 230 gram panchayats with 366 villages as per the direction of Directorate of Social Audit is in its final stage. As the Social Auditing wing of the district had received a few complaints from the public and elected representatives on a few houses situated on hilly terrain areas being left out from the social auditing, the directorate has directed to constitute special teams for cross-verification.

The special teams will be in the respective taluks from September 13 to 15. The public, elected representatives, members of organisations can inform the head of the team on the left out houses from social auditing. The team will visit such houses for verification and will include in the list of toilet-less houses to be submitted to the government. The public can also submit complaints in writing via email to socialauditmangalore@gmail.com.

The team heads in each taluk are as follows: Manjunath Patil (Bantwal-9972893500), R Manjunath P (Bantwal-9980141233), Sampath Kumar Poojar (Belthangady-9980114464), Hariprasad (Mangaluru-9916278446), Preetham Ponnappa (Puttur-9880842007) and Sukumar B (Sullia-9591660756).

In the meantime, Sheena Shetty, cleanliness ambassador for Dakshina Kannada, also the former ombudsman of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), has raised concern over toilet-less houses identified during the social auditing of household toilets. He has urged the authorities to initiate the process to construct toilets for those households that do not have toilets. There is a need to initiate a campaign on the model of total sanitation drive by involving all the stakeholders.

In a letter to executive officers of all five taluks, he said there is a need to ensure that every household, Anganwadi centres, schools and community centres have toilet facilities, compost pit and effective collection of plastic waste to achieve total cleanliness in villages.

In fact, Dakshina Kannada was first declared as ‘Sampoorna Swaccha’ district in the state. All the gram panchayats, taluk panchayats and zilla panchayat have won Nirmal Gram Puraskar as well. There is a need to sustain the cleanliness drive, he said.

“If gram panchayat presidents make a declaration on Open Defecation Free villages by conducting a special gram sabha on October 2, then Dakshina Kannada will become a model in ODF in the entire country,” he felt.