Rains will not affect preparation for Commonwealth Games: Sheila Dikshit

With the monsoon approaching Delhi, chief minister Sheila Dikshit today dismissed apprehensions that rains might affect the preparations for the Commonwealth Games in the city.

Dikshit was talking to the media on the sidelines of a conference on Cost-effective Sustainable Sanitation organised by NGO Plan India and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Institute along with UNICEF and Rural Development Ministry.

"No, no. We are aware of the fact that there will be rains. But we have done a lot of work already and we will take up all the relevant issues. Fortunately, rains in Delhi do not come for more than a day a so," she said to a query on whether rains will hit the Games-related infrastructure works.

Asked about water and power supply during the Games, she said, "There will be no shortage. During three months of unprecedented heat, with mercury always hovering around 40 degrees, we have managed it, we will manage it then also."

Earlier, delivering the keynote address at the meet, Dikshit said to combat the problem of waste removal in big cities like Delhi, there was need to adopt the principle of "use, re-use and recycle".

She referred to a project launched by her government recently to produce power from waste as well as the Yamuna interceptor scheme under which sludge removal will be undertaken to make the river water cleaner.

Dikshit also said while the job of the municipalities is to ensure that cities remain clean, educating the people about changing their "habit" is also a key factor.

"If people do not throw garbage on the streets, that will definitely help. There should be community participation in keeping the city clean. While the poor lack access to sanitation, in big cities the creator of majority of garbage is the rich people," she said.

The chief minister also said there was need to cleanse rivers which suffer water pollution due to industrialisation.

UNICEF deputy country director Lizette Burgers noted that 840 million children in the world lack access to sanitation and dwelt on how problems like open defecation leads to diseases like diarrhoea as well as malnutrition among children.

"In India, 3.86 lakh children die of diarrhoea every year but this goes unnoticed," she said. While India has made huge progress in the field, it still faces stiff challenges in meeting millennium development goal of halving the number of people with no access to sanitation by 2015, Burgers said.

Plan India executive director Bhagyashri Dengle, National Disaster Management Authority member Lt Gen JR Bhardwaj and joint secretary in water supply department TM Vijaya Bhaskar addressed the conference in which 300 delegates will discuss sustainable and cost-effective sanitation solutions.