Hakim inaugurates drinking water supply scheme in Nadia

State Urban Development and Municipal Affairs Minister Firhad Hakim on Wednesday inaugurated drinking water supply scheme at Shantipur in Nadia.

After coming to power in 2011, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee told the heads of the municipalities to prepare scheme to resolve the drinking water crisis. 

During summer, most of the municipalities had suffered from drinking water crisis and water tankers were sent to the affected areas. However, this could not resolve the issue. It may be mentioned that the Left Front government did not take any step to address the problem.

The water supply scheme in Shantipur has been started under the Jawaharlal Nehru national Urban Renewal Mission (JnNRRM)’s infrastructure development projects in medium and smaller towns.

The estimated cost of the project is Rs 4866.27 lakh. Over 2.37 lakh people will be benifited from this project. Around 26 million gallon of water will be lifted from the Bhagirathi river and purified in the filtration bay. The filtered water will be stored in underground reservoir. From there, the water will be stored in three overhead tanks and then supplied to the residents through pipeline covering an area of 45 kilometres.

Hakim said as per Chief Minister’s instructions, drinking water will be supplied free to the residents. He said work to provide drinking water in different municipalities would be completed soon.

It may be recalled that in order to resolve drinking water crisis in the Esplanade which was  in habituated by the British only, the British government  took  up the scheme to draw raw water from the Hooghly river, purify them and then sent it to the city way back in 1868. 

Thus, Palta water works of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) is the oldest civic body in the country to supply filtered water to its residents.