Jal Swapna: About 20K households to receive tap water from October

Kolkata: At least 20,000 households will be receiving tap water connection everyday from the beginning of October with almost all necessary arrangements of the state government in place.

At present the state Public Health Engineering (PHE) department provides tap water connection to 2,000 households each day. This comes when Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee launched "Jal Swapna" project worth Rs 58,000 crore aiming tap water connection to two crore households in the next five years.

Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha held a high level meeting on Thursday in this regard. Apart from the top brass of the PHE department, officials up to the department's executive engineer level in every district attended the same through video conference.

A state government official said that they were being told in the meeting to ensure that the benefits of the project reach to the people at the grassroot level and the work should be undertaken with human face to ensure maximum beneficiaries of the project as the success of a work does not depend just on statistical data.

The scope of expediting the work has also come up in the meeting. The officials of the PHE department have put forward their preparation to increase the number of households to provide tap water connection from 2,000 per day to 20,000 per day.

The tasks including survey, preparation of details project report (DPR) and the process of e-tendering for most schemes was necessary to reach the mark of 20,000 per day. Most of the same is complete and the clearance of the state Finance department is also expected of receiving

soon.

The state PHE department has set a target of providing tap water connection to at least 30 lakh households by the end of March 2021. The "Jal Swapna" project was launched by the Chief Minister on July 6. In just two months time, the state government has successfully provided tap water connection to 3.5 lakh households.

With 20,000 connections every day only, it will become possible to meet the target of providing the same to 30 lakh households by the end of March 2021.

Sources said, Principal Secretary of the PHE department Manoj Pant along with other senior officers hold district wise review meetings on a regular basis.