State government sets up quality control laboratory at River Research Institute

Kolkata: The state government has set up a quality control laboratory at River Research Institute (RRI) at Haringhata in Nadia under the state's Irrigation and Waterway's department.

This is the first such initiative in the state that has been taken by any department that needs to carry out work of infrastructure development.

The initiative to set up the quality control laboratory has started functioning on Wednesday and it will ensure proper quality test of materials without spending much time and money.

Rajib Banerjee, the state Irrigation minister, said: "Setting up of own quality control laboratory will help in saving time and money both as there will be no more need to send samples to any institute for testing."

In a bid to ensure quality work, samples of materials including sand, steel and even concrete get tested. Soil testing also becomes important before planning a project. Earlier, the samples had to be sent to some institute or even outside the state in places

including Mumbai. It used to consume a lot of time and development works used to get delayed without any valid reason. With setting up of the laboratory, the work of infrastructure development that the state Irrigation and Waterways department carries out will get expedited.

The laboratory consists of all sorts of modern gadgets necessary to carry out the required tests. The laboratory has come up at Haringhata in Nadia where tests for the works that will be undertaken in districts including Nadia and North 24 Parganas will be carried out.

Six such quality control laboratories will also be set up at places including Digha and Salt Lake, where testing of samples for work to be undertaken in Kolkata will be carried out.

At the same time, using the infrastructure of the RRI, there is a planning to initiate two degree courses on "River Engineering" and "Hydrology and Hydro-informatics". Moreover, it has been decided to commence short-term courses for departmental engineers and other employees in different modules. The initiative has been taken to help the employees of the department update themselves with development taking place in their respective areas.

As a part of the short-term training programmes, one such course has been initiated on Wednesday in which experts from IIT Kharagpur have addressed.

The state Irrigation and Waterways department has undertaken several projects in the past six years and turned huge acres of land to farmlands that helped in an increase in agricultural produce.