Minister of Urban Development M.Venkaiah Naidu and Co-Chair of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Shri Bill Gates today discussed at length implementation of Swachh Bharat Mission in urban areas of the country. Shri Gates said that “Foundation’s cooperation with India to promote safe and sustainable sanitation services to all is one of its best partnerships”. The Foundation signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with the Ministry of Urban Development to promote sanitation services in January this year. Shri Venkaiah Naidu informed Shri Gates that “after a slow start, all the States are now becoming pro-active to ensure cleanliness following huge enthusiasm generated among the public about sanitation in urban areas. Clean India can’t be achieved overnight but a good beginning has been made in that direction and efforts are to make Swachh Bharat Mission, a people’s movement”.
Gates referred to various approaches to promote sanitation and suggested that attention needs to be paid to fecal sludge management which gives better returns in terms of health impacts. He stressed on the need to set up decentralized sludge processing facilities for processing of fecal matter. He noted that individual toilets have been built on a large scale in Africa but their usage is low and emphasized the need for reaching quality toilet technologies to the people. Shri Gates expressed happiness with the ongoing cooperation with the Ministry of Urban Development and assured of full support to further collective goals around expanding the reach and effectiveness of safe and sustainable sanitation services to people of India. Shri M.Venkaiah Naidu said that along with construction of individual and community toilets, the Government is focusing on solid waste and septage management. Policy initiatives for promoting procurement of energy and compost produced from municipal solid waste are at an advanced stage of consideration. Shri Madhusudan Prasad, Secretary(Urban Development) and senior officials of the Ministry and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation also participated in the discussion.