11 plants to supply drinking water in WB

With an aim to supply quality drinking water to people in both urban and rural areas, the West Bengal government has set up 11 drinking water treatment plants in districts.

“We have set up treatments plants at 11 places in the state. People will not fall sick frequently if we ensure quality water supply to them,”  said West Bengal Panchayat minister Subrata Mukherjee.

Mukherjee was speaking at the launch of a new packaged drinking water ‘Pran Dhara’, an initiative by the state government’s Public Health Engineering Department (PHED), to provide purified water to large section of the state.

The 11 plants have been set up at Jalpaiguri, Coochbehar, Malda, Murshidabad, Birbhum, Nadia, Bardhaman, Bankura, North 24 Parganas including two in South.

Stating that the idea to supply purified drinking water to people in the state was that of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Mukherjee said the government was also working on a pilot project to set up <g data-gr-id="24">water-vending</g> machines at 100 schools across the state.

“We have also taken up a pilot project to set up <g data-gr-id="20">water-vending</g> machines at schools to provide children with quality drinking water,” Mukherjee said, adding that these were highly scientific machines manufactured in Germany.

The machines have already been set up at 10 schools in the state, he said adding that as per the CM’s wish one such machine would soon be set up in front of the Kalighat Temple. The state has decided to set up fair price shops at all government-run hospitals where bottles would be sold at 40 <g data-gr-id="26">per cent</g> discount.