Rs 2,016 cr sanctioned to supply drinking water for rural populace

Subrata Mukherjee, the state panchayat and rural development minister, said ADB authorities had given their nod a week ago and on Friday they have communicated their final decision of sanctioning the money for the projects in Bankura, North 24-Parganas and Nandigram to the Centre.

Mukherjee was speaking in a special session on “Future Roadmap of Rural Development of West Bengal” organised by Bharat Chamber of Commerce. He said that the money has been allotted to set up a water treatment plant in which water pumped in from river Hooghly will be purified and supplied from Haroa to Rajarhat in North 24-Parganas. Besides setting up the water treatment plant, the pipeline in the entire stretch will also be laid. The total cost of the project is Rs 686 crore. The second project would be the phase II of the water treatment plant in Bankura in which water from Damodar Valley Corporation will be purified. The second phase of the project will be developed at a cost of Rs 833 crore and the third project will be at Nandigram in East Midnapore. Around Rs 477 crore would be invested for the project to ensure sufficient supply of safe drinking water in Nandigram. The work to prepare Detailed Project Report of all the three projects would be prepared jointly with ADB authorities soon and the work to set up the projects would start by the beginning of 2017.

Mukherjee said that there was also a “fruitful” discussion with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for a funding of another Rs 2,000 crore for the project to set up 90 water supply units in 20 blocks of Purulia. “They have invited me to go Japan in November and hopefully the money will be sanctioned for the project,” said Mukherjee adding that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has directed to develop a system to provide sufficient supply of safe drinking water in the households of the rural mass as the people staying in urban areas get. “A decision has been taken to supply 70 litre of water to each person of a family per day. Thus a family with five members will get 350 litres of water every day,” he said.

In connection with the reduction of fund for Gram Sadak Yojana (GSY) by the Centre, Mukherjee said that it takes around Rs 60 lakh to construct a kilometre of concrete road. But the ration of the state and the Centre for allocation of fund is 60 per cent to 40 per cent and this comes at the time when Centre is yet to clear Rs 2,000 crore and Rs 1,000 crore for the 100-days job scheme.

While speaking about procurement of land by private entrepreneurs to set up factory, he said that either they have to buy land directly from farmers where the state government has nothing to deal with or they have to take land from the state government’s land bank.