New Delhi, Sept. 10: The Centre is planning to link cleaning of public toilets to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and implement it in Bihar first, giving a big push to Prime Narendra Modi’s ambitious Clean India mission.

Upendra Kushwaha, the Union minister of state for rural development and drinking water and sanitation, said while the government was giving great emphasis on constructing toilets, their maintenance was a big problem. Hence, a change in the existing policy was required, he said.

“In villages, there are toilets in schools, anganwadi centres, panchayats and other community buildings but they are mostly in a shambles. In most cases, they are so filthy that they are virtually unusable. In Bihar and several other states, even availability of water is not a problem but no attention is paid to keeping the toilets clean once they are erected. On my trips to various districts in Bihar in the past few weeks, I could not find a single usable public toilet and it struck me that maintenance of the toilets has to be assigned to somebody. Only then will it be done properly. We, therefore, are planning to bring maintenance of toilets under MGNREGA. We would first introduce it in Bihar and then take it to other states,” Kushwaha told The Telegraph.

The minister, however, conceded that introducing such a provision would require tweaking of the act — often touted as the world’s largest social security measure. It aims to guarantee the right to work and ensure livelihood security in rural areas by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.

“We have asked officials to look into the act and see how the provision can be made. At present, MGNREGA mainly involves works that lead to asset creation,” the minister added.

Union minister Nitin Gadkari had earlier announced the decision to delink MGNREGA from the toilet construction programme, saying the scheme started by the previous UPA government did not work well on the ground.

Officials in the ministry, meanwhile, said people did not mind using pay toilets while in urban areas, but it was a big challenge to keep toilets clean in the rural parts. “Seldom are there dedicated cleaners in public toilets and there is no provision for providing for maintenance staff once these are constructed. We will see how provisions can be made in MGNREGA and Nirmal Bharat Yojana to accommodate these suggestions,” said a senior official.