UN Public Service Award goes to Nadia District

In Awards and Honours
May 9, 2015

Nadia district in West Bengal has been declared as the winner of the ‘2015 United Nations Public Service Award’ in the category of improving delivery of public services. The district has earned this prestigious award for constructing toilets for all the people under the programme “Sabar Shouchagar”.

Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee said “Nadia has become the winner of this global award from our entire country through a tough competition with multiple entries from 187 countries”. The Award would be presented by the United Nations Secretary General on June 23, 2015 in Medellin, Republic of Colombia.

Recently Nadia was declared as the first “open defecation free” district in country. The Nadia project began in 2013 and around Rs 400 crore was spent to build toilets in 3,55,609 households in the district. When the project was started, more than 33.8 per cent of the people in the district defecated defecated. This figure is now down to 0.02 per cent.

Tidbits

India is the country with the highest number of people practicing open defecation (nearly 50% of Indian Population defecate openly).
Open Defecation causes diseases such as diarrhea and intestinal worm infections but also typhoid, cholera, hepatitis, polio, trachoma.
The other countries with a high number of people openly defecating are Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Ethiopia.