Journey under SBM-G | 6650 J&K villages ODF plus model

Srinagar, Sep 29: The Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, having achieved ODF Plus Model status on August 14, 2023, has declared all its 6650 villages across 285 blocks in 20 districts as ODF Plus Model.

The achievement of ODF Plus Model for all villages in the UT is a significant milestone as it goes beyond constructing and use of toilets towards cleanliness by managing grey water and solid waste in each village.

Pertinently, for a village to achieve the status of ODF plus Model, it has to go through three stages of ODF Plus including ODF plus Aspiring, ODF plus Rising and ODF plus Model. Only when a village has achieved a condition where it is visually clean with minimal litter and stagnant water, apart from the solid and liquid waste management and adequate IEC activities it is declared as ODF plus Model.

In its attempt to make all villages ODF Plus Model, the Rural Sanitation department has made a comprehensive plan which was meticulously knitted in bringing all the stakeholders on board before execution of the same. The department made Village Sanitation Saturation Plans (VSSP) for each village to ensure it has assets available for solid liquid waste management. Based on the plans, for grey water management i.e. water generated from kitchen, bathing etc. soak pits, magic and leach pits have been developed by the department at household and community level. About 353631 individual soak pits and 23781 community soak pits have been constructed by the department. Wherever kitchen gardens are available people have been motivated to dispose grey water through the kitchen gardens.

For biodegradable waste management, individual and community compost pits have been constructed. Nearly, 137824 individual compost pits and 12118 community compost pits have been constructed either by the department or by people themselves in their households. People are being encouraged to segregate dry and wet waste and process wet waste in compost pits. Also, 1850 waste collection and segregation sheds have been constructed for proper disposal of waste. Besides, 536 Community Sanitary Complexes have also been constructed in J&K.

GOBARdhan which is Galvanising Organic Bio Agro Resource is a waste to wealth initiative where animal dung and kitchen waste is used to generate biogas/bio slurry. While two such projects are already functional in JK UT, 18 more such projects are in the final stage of completion.

Door to Door collection of waste has been initiated in all the panchayats. Through involvement of locals, youth clubs, NGOs, expert agencies waste is being collected from households to be taken to segregation sheds where waste is segregated into various categories such as paper, wood, plastic etc. for its disposal. Some of these segregation shed are semi mechanized with bailers, shredders etc.

To cater to plastic waste in villages, Plastic Waste Management Units (PWMU) are being established in each block, some of which are in the final stage of completion. The plastic in these centers would be cleaned, shredded, bailed etc. for its final disposal. The complete life cycle of the waste is properly managed.

The work which was done on ground was promptly captured and updated on the IMIS portal of SBM- G by the Blocks and Districts which facilitated timely completion of the task and making JK UT one of the first few UTs/ States in the country to achieve this goal. The entire work is required to be uploaded on the SBM(G) IMIS portal. For declaring a village as ODF plus besides the uploading of ground reporting with clear visual, videos of Gram Sabhas being conducted and declaring their villages as ODF Plus are all required to be uploaded on the portal.