Hill village fully sanitised

This has been possible after two years' painstaking motivational work by workers of a local NGO, Jumchab Metta Foundation (JMF), according to JMF coordinator Jyotindra Chakma.

Sanitary latrines have been installed in each of the 75 households here, he said. 'We motivated villagers individually or in groups and convinced them to set up sanitary latrines. At one stage, they set the up those but they did not use it. But we stick to our work and finally became successful, he told this correspondent who visited the village last week.

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'You see, now every child at the village is well-aware about hygienic behavior. We rendered them education on health and environment to rear them as good citizens', he said.

Earlier, the villagers used to defecate inside the jungles.

'This is a shame that previously we rushed to jungles for defecation. This is because we lacked health education,' said a high school dropout, Nirod Kumar Chakma.

'But now everybody, adult or child, defecates in sanitary latrines,' he said. 'Not only that they are also habituated with post-defecation cleanliness behaviour, he said adding, now, each and every member of a family, even children, use soap or ash after defecation.

Earlier, the villagers lacked pure drinking water throughout the year.Now the villagers built ring-wells with the help of JMF..