kolkata: The water woes of more than 36000 residents of Ichapore-Nilgunj Panchayat area under Madhyamgram Assembly constituency in North 24-Parganas, particularly during summer, will soon be a thing of the past with the commencement of work of a water treatment plant at Malikapur.
State Food and Supplies minister Rathin Ghosh, who is an MLA from Madhyamgram recently marked the beginning of construction of the water treatment plant which will be responsible for supplying potable water to the residents of around six odd villages under this Panchayat area.
The project is being executed by the state Public Health and Engineering department at a total cost of Rs 16 crore.
The residents have to depend on hand tubewells for procurement of drinking water and during summer they were subjected to a lot of miseries with further depletion in water level.
The residents of villages in the likes of Malikapur, Rudrapur, Kapasia, Ahira to name a few are compelled to travel long distances to adjoining localities often for fetching water. The problem further aggravates if any of the tubewells get defunct as it takes almost three days to repair.
There was a disparity in water supply among the residents of the villages.
“Once this treatment plant gets functional, each individual in a household (with 5 members) will get 55 litres of water,” Ghosh said.“It has been our long-standing demand and we are happy that the water project is coming up,” Mohamaddan Rahman, one of the beneficiaries of the project said.