'Over 50 lakh rural households have clean potable tap water connections'

Kolkata: Bengal achieved a new milestone by providing tap water connections to over 50 lakh rural households under the Jal Swapno project.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee congratulated all those involved in achieving this success and tweeted: "GoWB is dedicated to serving people & ensuring their holistic welfare. I'm delighted to announce that more than 50 lakh rural households in Bengal now have access to clean potable water through tap water connections. Congratulations to all involved in achieving this milestone."

The state Public Health Engineering (PHE) department is working on a mission mode to ensure tap water connections to 1 crore 77 lakh families under the Jal Swapno project by the end of 2024. The project kicked off in July 2020.

Nadia has been provided with the highest number of connections to the tune of nearly 6.63 lakh followed by Murshidabad with over 5.12 lakh and East Burdwan with over 4.07 lakh water connections.

The Mamata Banerjee government already achieved a major milestone by becoming the top state in the country in providing tap water connections to households in the financial year 2021-22.

Bengal had provided over 23.37 lakh connections in the last fiscal, well ahead of second and third rankers Odisha and Bihar, providing 17.47 lakh and 17.39 lakh connections respectively.

BJP-ruled Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh are far behind with over 9.51 and 6.57 lakh connections respectively.

Apart from implementing the Jal Swapno project on a war footing, the state government has laid emphasis on water testing infrastructure.

"In 2011, there were 128 such centres and none of them had NABL accreditation. Presently, there are 220 centres among which 144 are NABL accredited, the highest in the country," state PHE minister Pulak Roy said. Several Asha workers have been engaged in collecting samples of water for testing from households where water connections have been provided. Many of them have been given test kits for testing the water quality. District Project Monitoring Unit (DPMU) and Implementation Support Agency (ISA) have been engaged in all districts for awareness regarding drinking water.

Agencies engaged as valve operators, pump operators etc are being selected in a manner so that they get facilities of provident fund, ESI etc.

"We are following the directions of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and executing the work to ensure that people get the benefits of the project at the earliest," Roy said.