Madurai: A 90-year-old couple from Achampatti village near Madurai have won the Central government’s appreciation for inspiring all the people in their village to construct individual toilets under Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM).
The couple, Alagu and Agmmal, was the first to construct toilet in their house when the entire village showed reluctance to make use of the Central government scheme.
On Wednesday, the couple’s picture was seen circulated on social media and receiving appreciation for leading the young towards ‘Swachh Bharat’. The SBM officer’s twitter account of the national campaign for a clean India, has uploaded their picture.
“We are overwhelmed when we heard that the government has appreciated us for constructing toilets,” said Alagu (90) from the village. The SBM, launched in 2014 by the Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi to made India open defecation free (ODF), is being effectively implemented by District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) in Madurai.
As many as 68 village panchayats in the district have been made ODF during last year. When the Central government reviewed the progress made in implementing the SBM in Tamil Nadu recently, they were impressed by the couple’s initiative who made the village to attain OPF status.
“All these years we have been using open spaces to defecate because nobody educated us about using toilet,” said Alagu. When the village panchayat president Murugan told the couple about the scheme, they immediately agreed to construct the toilet. “It came as blessing for us because we found it difficult to defecate in open space due to age factor,” he said.
The panchayat president Murugan said after people witnessed the couple using the toilet, they started demanding him to construct similar one in their house. “Now all the 300 houses in our village have toilets and nobody defecates in the open space,” he said.
The additional collector B Rohini Ramdas said that to sustain the ODF status in the 68 panchayats they have trained motivators to interact with the people on regular basis and educate them on personal hygiene. “The motivators would also be visiting the villages during wee hours to prevent the people from using the open space,” she said.
