Sanitation for coastal areas still stagnant

KOCHI: The much-hyped Suchitwa Mission’s sanitation project for the coastal  panchayats of Chellanam, Kumbalangi and Kumbalam still remains on paper. With the project delaying indefinitely, the chances of it bringing any  relief to the people in these places during monsoon seems remote. These three panchayats have been reeling under acute sanitation issues owing to their geographical position and absence of modern septic tanks. Every    monsoon, the issues worsen due to water logging and the low-lying landscape  of the areas. Though the government, in an earlier initiative, provided commodes to the   residents here, the sanitation issues still remain unresolved. Besides,    many of these areas lack the usual three-column septic tanks and depend on   the cemented ring tanks. It was following these issues that the sanitation project, wherein septic tanks will be supplied to every house, was launched. Though it looked clean  on paper, at the ground-level the matter was different. “When we went to prepare the estimates of the project, we found that owing  to the geographical conditions, ordinary septic tanks will not work here.   They will become defunct during monsoons. When we prepared the detailed  estimates of the ones suitable for the area, it was found that each of them    cost around `40,000 to 60,000. Under the new conditions, the project cost  will escalate substantially. So we had to stall it at least for the time being,” said District Sanitation Officer P K Alexander.To make matters worse, the project implementation strategy too failed miserably.“We made a mistake with the implementation strategy. One ward each from   three panchayats was selected each with 20 beneficiaries. Out plan was that after implementing the project in these three wards, it would be analysed  and spread to other wards. But, owing to our inexperience we selected 20  members from all the wards. Now that has to be corrected and we will table  it before the Parliament at the earliest and get it passed,” said Union Minister of State for Food and Civil Supplies K V Thomas. The funds for the project were sourced from the minister’s MPLADS.