New Delhi: Aimed at promoting clean hygiene practices in educational institutes, the Government on Thursday launched a programme which will rate schools on the basis of their contribution towards effective sanitation.
"The purpose of the ratings is to recognize those schools which are taking significant steps towards effective sanitation and improvement in service delivery leading to the desired behavioral and attitudinal changes towards hygiene sanitation," HRD Minister Kapil Sibal said while launching the 'national school sanitation ratings programme' .
Observing that such ratings would infuse required dynamism in schools towards sanitation management, he said, "I would like all schools, as a matter of pride, to display online, school's sanitation rating on their letter heads and other school publications".
He said a space for the blogs is also being created so that the comments on the ratings and other aspects on the issue could be viewed.
Besides, he suggested that staff toilets be closed every Wednesday so that they become "appreciative" of the state of the toilets used by students.
Sibal also expressed his anguish over the fact that even government schools including those with good facilities do not have a good sanitation and waste management facilities.
"There are 860 million mobile phones in the country but not as many toilets. This reflects not just upon India but our attitude towards sanitation. It also reflects that the govt. over the years has not paid the kind of attention that ought to have been paid on issues related to sanitation," Sibal said.
He said under the existing national school sanitation initiative, it will be incumbent on part of the schools to lay emphasis on personal hygiene, proper sanitation, clean toilets, safe drinking water and separate toilets for both the genders.
To enlarge the sanitation coverage, he said a sanitation waves programme "ripples" will be launched, covering 2,500 schools.
"Further we have decided to institute national school sanitation awards on an annual basis for those schools which have rated online for sanitation and taken noteworthy steps towards betterment of sanitation scenario in their schools," he said.
PTI
First Published: Thursday, July 07, 2011, 13:36