NTPC Gives Funds To Construct Toilets
As part of their CSR activity, NTPC officials handed out cheques of Rs 4000 to the people of 46th division in the presence of Corporator Somarapu Lavanya for construction of individual sanitary latrines in Ramagundam, Telangana state. An attempt to support the Swacch Bharat Abhiyan and making the state open defecation free, NTPC gave away 82 cheques to the people. As reported by The Hans India, the CSR team of the firm also audited the activities carried out in 2016-17, regarding solar energy, construction of classrooms in schools and medical equipment in the local hospitals.
Battling open defecation was a major part of the Abhiyan and many cities, after incessant campaigning, have declared themselves as open defecation free. It was found that it was not necessarily true. Just constructing toilets does not solve a problem of this magnitude. The government started the drive by installing toilets in all the slum areas and kaccha houses in the cities. For this, workers were sent to the slums and they constructed toilets. However, it was found that the toilets were of no use because there were drainage and clogging problems. Due to waterlogging, the toilets were becoming the source of water-borne diseases like Malaria. The condition of the public toilets is also very bad, and it is unusable since many do not have doors or proper pipelines and water supply.
Swacch Bharat Abhiyan gets funds from both the center and the state governments. It also gets help from the corporate sector in a big way. According to the India CSR Outlook Report 2017, Rs 502 Cr CSR funds were spent on the Swacch Bharat Abhiyan, which is almost 7.3% of the total CSR spent in the year 2016-17. Pledging support to the government, corporates like Indian Oil, Dabur, TCS, GAIL and NTPC are the frontrunners in this domain. First of its kind, this cleanliness movement marked its third year on October 2nd. It was launched by the Prime Minister as a people’s participative movement to make the country clean and hygienic. But after three years, the results are yet to be seen on the remote scale.
Similarly, CSR projects simply directed funds to the government or carried out awareness drives. What NTPC is doing is slightly different, since it is directly giving the money for construction to the people. The drainage problem has to be solved by the municipal corporations, though. If that issue is not solved, there is no point of constructing toilets. It is important for the company to follow up and audit that the funds are put to the intended use.
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