'Punjab's district leads country in Mission Swach and Swasth'

Punjab minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa today said that the state's Fatehgarh Sahib district has been ranked first in the country under regular monitoring of the Centre's Mission Swach and Swasth.
To make the country clean and healthy by 2019, the Centre's department of drinking water and sanitation, is carrying out regular monitoring of states under the Mission, he said.
The minister said that this also promotes a healthy competition among states to achieve targets in providing potable water and sanitation to the people.
"Based the daily monitoring of these, two districts of Punjab -- Fathegrah Sahib and Barnala -- have bagged first and ninth position, respectively, under this Mission," he said.

The best performing districts would be felicitated by the prime minister on October 2 in New Delhi, Bajwa said.
"Both these districts have been showing exemplary performance, and the water supply and sanitation department is trying its best to replicate this performance in other districts of the state," he said.

The Punjab water supply and sanitation minister, Bajwa, underlined the need for laying more thrust on border districts such as Amritsar, Ferozepur, Gurdaspur and Pathankot under this scheme.
He has directed officers to review the entire situation in these districts and submit a detailed status report to him, regarding the restarting of closed schemes.

The minister also gave directions to bringing villages under the scheme to provide 12 to 24 hours water supply, construction of toilets in villages and make them open defecation (ODF) free.
He said that in order to make the rural areas of the state ODF the state government has already embarked a major programme, under which 10 districts have achieved this status.
More than half of the villages in Patiala and Mansa district have also been made ODF, the minister said.
Though Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has set the target of this year-end to make the state ODF, the department was trying its best to achieve this goal by November-end, Bajwa said.

He asked the people to support the department for construction of toilets and asked the panchayats to manage the water supply schemes on their own.