STATE ANNOUNCES SETTING UP OF SANITATION HUB

Municipal administration minister K.T. Rama Rao on Friday announced that a sanitation hub (S-Hub) — an incubator for promoting start-ups and innovations in water, sanitation, solid waste management and waste water recycling — would come up in the city to make the cities and towns liveable and healthy. A seed fund of

`25 crore will be earmarked for this initiative

He said he was “extremely upset” with the water, sanitation and hygiene scenario. He said Hyderabad could only treat 59 per cent of the

2,000 million litres of sewage that is produced every day.

Addressing delegates at the valedictory session of Ink Wash Summit in Hyderabad, Mr Rao said that S-Hub will be the go-to place that would incubate ideas and build an ecosystem for innovations knowledge dissemination and capacity building in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector.

The government proposes to house the S-Hub at the Administrative Staff College of India for two years and then establish a dedicated facility at the proposed Centre for Urban Excellence.

Mr Rao said that the state government had prioritised the WASH sector and is committed to achieving the targets well ahead of the globally agreed timelines. The minister said that urban local bodies in the state have achieved ODF status and were working towards

ODF++ protocols through safe management of faecal sludge and septage.

Mr Rao said the government was striving to universalise access to individual household tap connection and safe sanitation in all urban local bodies. The new Municipal Act took a rightsbased approach to water, sanitation and other municipal services.