gSwachhata Hi Seva National Media Consultation held in Capital
Independent survey shows a family saves Rs 50,000 a year by investing in a toilet;
Return on investment in a toilet for a family 430%
Return on investment in a toilet for a family 430%
New Delhi, Sept 18: Over 100 journalists, development agencies and community workers attended a National Media Consultation on the Swachh Bharat Mission in the Capital. The Secretary, Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Shri Parameswaran Iyer, presided over the consultation. In his opening remarks, shared details of the nation-wide mass mobilization drive, “Swachhata Hi Seva”, which follows an impassioned call by the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, ahead of the 3rd anniversary of Swachh Bharat Mission that falls on 2nd October. He said that the Swachhata Hi Seva campaign is seeing large scale mobilisation of people from all walks of life to undertake shramdaan for cleanliness and construction of toilets, and cleaning up of public and tourist places. The participation has already begun in full swing, and has ranged from the President of India to the common citizen, involving Union Ministers, Governors, Chief Ministers, legislators, celebrities, faith leaders, and corporate leaders spearheading the campaign in their respective areas of influence. He particularly appreciated the tremendous efforts being made by school children, central police services and defence personnel.
The Secretary also shared a snapshot of the progress made by the Swachh Bharat Mission so far, mentioning that 5 States, nearly 200 districts and nearly 2.4 lakh villages across the country have already declared themselves as Open Defecation Free. 1.5 lakh villages have ranked themselves on the Village Swachhta Index based on the solid and liquid waste management in the villages. He also quoted an independent survey conducted across 140,000 households by the Quality Council of India, which found household toilet usage to be 91%. He concluded by calling upon the media to spread the message of sanitation and cleanliness during the fortnight and beyond.
Mr Nicolas Osbert, Chief, WASH, UNICEF India, in his welcome address, spoke about the impact of lack of sanitation on the health and growth of small children. He said that it was heartening to note that, with the Swachh Bharat Mission and the personal leadership of India’s Prime Minister himself, concrete action is happening on the ground with respect to changing old habits through genuine focus on behavior change.
He also shared with the media present, the results of an independent survey conducted by UNICEF across 10000 households in 12 States of the country, to measure the economic impact of sanitation at a household level. He said the survey found that, in fully ODF communities, considering the medical costs averted, value of mortality averted, and the value of time savings, an average family that invests in a toilet will save Rs 50,000 per year. The cost-benefit ratio of a household found in the study was 430% in fully ODF communities. This meant that a single rupee invested in sanitation, allows a family to save Rs 4.30. He added that these benefits are the highest for the poorest quintile of the population in a community, which was encouraging as it established that improved sanitation helps the poorest of the poor the most.
Swachh Bharat Champions from the grassroots, Ms. Madhu Chauhan (Sarpanch, Bijnor district, Uttar Pradesh), Shri Rajneesh Sharma (Primary School Principal, Meerut district, Uttar Pradesh), and Ms. Deepa Joshi (ANM supervisor, US Nagar, Uttarakahand), also shared their experiences with the media on the occasion.
PM, FM meet on economy concern
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will interact with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and other top officials today to take stock of the situation and discuss remedial measures to bolster growth.
According to PTI, Mr Modi will threadbare analyse the economic situation with Mr Jaitley and secretaries of the finance ministry and explore options to stimulate the economy. The meeting comes days after government data showed GDP growth in the first quarter of the current fiscal slumping to a three-year low of 5.7 per cent, from 7.9 per cent in April- June of 2016 and 6.1 per cent of January-March.
The teething troubles with the rollout of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), after-effects of demonetisation and the fiscal space available is likely to figure during the meeting. Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian had last week briefed the Prime Minister on macro-economic situation.
Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia- headed panel will meet export promotion associations in New Delhi today to deliberate on the issues faced by the industry under the Goods and Services Tax, GST.
The GST Council said in a tweet that representatives from eight export promotion associations will discuss the difficulties faced by the exporters. Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia will also attend the meet. This will be its first meeting ever since the constitution of the panel last Tuesday.
The GST Council, chaired by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and comprising state counterparts, had in its last meeting on 9th of this month decided to set up a committee under Mr Adhia to look into the issues faced by the export sector.
The panel is mandated to recommend to the GST Council a suitable strategy for helping the export sector in the post-GST set-up.
Rohingya crisis update and what you can do to help
Dear friend
The ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya shows no sign of letting up. More than 400,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, around half of them children. The government of Burma said this weekend that they were “involved in the violent attacks” and have fled arrest.
That’s more than half the entire Rohingya population in Burma driven out in less than a month.
Our sources tell us that attacks are spreading to more areas where Rohingya live. Tens of thousands more Rohingya are trapped in Burma, having fled their homes but with no way to get to Bangladesh. Thousands have been killed, many more are facing starvation.
The response of the British government has been hopeless. They secured two meetings at the UN Security Council but with no practical outcome. They haven’t even stopped the military training programmes they give to an army now engaged in ethnic cleansing.
Burma Campaign UK has been working round the clock on this crisis, getting information to media and working with them behind the scenes so they can report what is going on, helping Rohingya organisations, working with MPs, 157 of whom wrote to the British government calling for an end to military training, and rushing from TV studio to TV studio to talk about the crisis and what the international community must do about it. We are doing everything we can to raise awareness and pressure governments to act. We are only a small organisation. It’s your support which has enabled us to do this.
A lot of supporters have been asking us about Aung San Suu Kyi’s response to this crisis. Frankly, it is shocking. She has so much respect from people in Burma, she was the one person who could have challenged the endemic prejudice against the Rohingya. Tomorrow (Tuesday 19th September) she is making a speech on Burmese TV. We can only hope that she will change her approach.
Whilst much of the criticism of Aung San Suu Kyi is justified, if we want to save Rohingya lives, at this time we need to focus pressure on Min Aung Hlaing and his military. We explain why in this article by our Director, Mark Farmaner.
If you haven’t taken action to ask the British government to stop training the Burmese Army, you can do so here.
If you have taken these actions, please forward them to friends and share on social media.
We’ll be in touch soon with more news and an update on the campaign.
Many thanks for your support.
Anna Roberts
Executive Director
Anna Roberts
Executive Director
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This is writer views not our view or news. The riders are Burma campaign UK.
Implement the Sustainable Development Goals
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DOROTHY HIRSHON SUITE, 55 West 13th Street, Room 205
Interactive session on Invest in Brussels: Your Gateway to Europe
Brussels capital of Belgium in centre Head of EU.
Mr Reinout Van Hullebus
Mr Marc de Mil
Mr Reinout Van Hullebus
Mr Marc de Mil
Belgium second to German in Export .Telecom, Transport, ICT, Many Indian cos are in Belgium.King Of Belgium to visit India in Nov.
National Conference on Mission Mode to address Under-Nutrition
Three States to be awarded for reducing prevalence of stunting in population
The Ministry of Women and Child Development held the first ever National Conference in New Delhi tomorrow on Mission Mode to address Under-Nutrition in the country. In his curtain raiser briefing in New Delhi today, the Secretary WCD, Shri Rakesh Srivastava said that this conference is being organized by the Ministry of Women & Child Development in collaboration with Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation and Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, keeping in mind the goal of “Malnutrition Free India-2022”.
Giving details about the conference, the Secretary WCD said that the Government has decided to lay focused attention on this issue and for this said purpose, Ministry of Women and Child Development has identified 113 districts across the States/UTs based on the composite index of NITI Ayong and prevelance of stunting from NFHS-4 data. At least one district has been selected from each State/UTs so that the action taken in the selected district can be emulated in the other districts also, he explained.
Shri Srivastava said that the National Conference, first of its kind, aims at bringing convergence at District/Block levels of the three key Departments (Health & Family Welfare, ICDS/Social Welfare and Drinking Water and Sanitation) wherein a roadmap would be drawn to evolve an appropriate strategy in tackling the problem of stunting, under-nutrition and wasting comprehensively and conclusively.
The conference would be sensitizing the District Collectors/Deputy Commissioners/District Magistrates as well as the District-level officers of Health & Family Welfare, Nutrition (ICDS/SW), Drinking Water & Sanitation Departments in the 113 High Burden Districts along with the Principal Secretaries/Secretaries, in-charge of these three Departments of all States/UTs on a multitude of topics relating to stunting, under-nutrition and wasting and the key strategic interventions which are urgently required.
The District Magistrates/District Collectors/Deputy Commissioners in these 113 high burden districts, through a dashboard, will regularly monitor and review the schemes covering the aspects of nutrition across the line departments within their jurisdiction at least once in a three month period. Such a review and monitoring at district level would be done in an exclusively and dedicated manner (between 1st to 10th of January, April, July and October every year) to address implementation of schemes having a direct bearing on nutrition and Health.
Shri Rakesh Srivastava said that three States will be awarded at the conference tomorrow. These three states will be awarded for showing good progress in the area of reduction in stunting as measured between NFHS-3 and NFHS-4. These States are Chattisgarh, Arunachal Pradesh and Gujarat.
Joint Secretary WCD, Dr. Rajesh Kumar said that several important steps have already been taken by the WCD Ministry recently for a multipronged strategy to manage malnutrition. This includes training ICDS functionaries, developing a curriculum for ECCE, food fortification guidelines among others. He further stated that the WCD Ministry has developed a world class software ‘ICDS-CAS’ for real time monitoring of nutrition related parameters in 8 States. This system is one of its kind in the world and 60,000 Anganwadis have already been given tablets to report growth parameters on a daily basis with the help of this system, Dr. Rajesh Kumar explained.
The problem of malnutrition is inter-generational and is dependent on multiple factors which inter-alia, include proper Infant & Young Child Feeding (IYCF) practices, Immunization, Institutional Delivery, Early Childhood Development, Food Fortification, Deworming, access to safe drinking water & proper sanitation (WASH), Dietary diversification, full ANC checkup, early initiation of breast feeding, ICT enabled real time monitoring and implementation of Anganwadi Services, Improving infrastructure of Anganwadi Centres along with training of Anganwadi workers and other related factors. These factors can also be Area specific or dependent on particular geographical conditions. Further, it requires a convergent approach among all the three departments i.e. Health & Family Welfare, ICDS/Social Welfare and Drinking Water and Sanitation to tackle the issue of malnutrition comprehensively and conclusively.
Some of the important sessions at tomorrow’s conference include efficacy of food fortification, sustainable solution through breast feeding, dietary diversification, improving maternal & child health through Mission Indradhanush, improving program delivery effectiveness, accelerating Real Time Monitoring among others.
Dated 18th September, 2017
INVITATION
Dear Sir/Madam,
You are cordially invited to cover the following event:
| EVENT | : | Minister for Women & Child Development, Smt Maneka Sanjay Gandhi to inaugurate National Conference on Mission Mode to address Under-Nutrition. MoS WCD, Dr. Virendra Kumar, Dr. Vinod Paul, Member NITI Ayog and Shri Bhaskar Khulbe, Secretary to PM will be Guests of Honour |
| DATE | : | 19th September , 2017 |
| TIME | : | 10:30 AM |
| VENUE | : | Convention Hall, The Ashok Hotel, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi |
Yours sincerely,
(Nanu Bhasin)
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