Cuttack: The municipal corporation has started the process to declare nearly half of its wards as open defecation free zones.

The Cuttack Municipal Corporation has been implementing the Swachh Bharat Mission in a phased manner to make its wards open defecation free (ODF).

"In the first phase, we have targeted to declare 29 wards as open defecation free areas." said deputy commissioner Shyam Sundar Sethi. "Accordingly, the process has started to fulfil the mission's parameters in the wards targeted for achieving the ODF tag by end of September." The city has 59 wards.

The Centre's mission aims to ensure access to sanitation facilities, including toilets, solid and liquid wastes disposal systems and urban cleanliness, to every person by 2019. Any urban local body can declare its wards ODF only if it is successful in providing public conveniences at 75 per cent of its areas. Also, there should be provision for toilets within 500 metres of the slum settlements.

The civic body has been conducting a survey with the help of community organisers, sanitary inspectors, anganwadi workers and tax collectors to identify households that lack toilets.

Sethi said: "We have received applications from 11,700 households to have their own toilets."

The corporation is providing Rs 8,000 for each toilet. "While toilets have been constructed against nearly 4,000 applications, the rest are in various stages of construction," he said.

Chairman of the civic body's standing committee for sanitation Ranjan Kumar Biswal said ward sanitation committees were on the job in all the 59 wards to create responsiveness among the people, especially the slum dwellers.

The committees, headed by the respective councillors, has community organisers as members along with representatives of NGOs.

At present, there are 87 public toilets near the slum settlements in various wards with the recent addition of 20 toilets. "We have undertaken repair of the public toilets," Biswal said.

After the opening of eight hybrid community toilets, work is under progress for coming up with another 37 hybrid toilets constituting of five, seven and 10 toilet seats in various places of the city. The toilets are called hybrid because both the public and slum dwellers can use them. While the public will pay for using them, the slum dwellers will be provided with a monthly pass. The toilets will be available free after 8pm till 8am, an official said.