Properly monitor expenditure under Jal Swapno scheme, says Chief Secretary

kolkata: Chief Secretary HK Dwivedi on Tuesday expressed displeasure over the status of sanction versus expenditure of the Jal Swapno scheme and issued directions to the Public Health Engineering (PHE) department which is executing the same to properly monitor the expenditure.

Dwivedi took stock of the rural drinking water scheme in the state executed by the PHE department with the target of ensuring tap water connection to 1 crore 77 lakh families by the end of 2024. The project kicked off in July 2020.

The overall expenditure percentage in connection with the scheme is only 14 per cent and in districts like Jhargram, West Midnapore, South Dinajpur, Murshidabad, North Dinajpur and Birbhum the expenditure percentage is in the single digit.

The total number of schemes sanctioned has been 10,622 with the cost involved Rs 39,514 crore. A tender has been invited for 179.18 lakh FHTCs (Functional Household Tap Connections) and a work order issued for 128.84 lakh FHTCs among which work has been grounded for 110.24 lakh FHTCs

Purulia, West Midnapore, South Dinajpur, South 24-Parganas, Jhargram, Darjeeling and Malda have tap connections of less than 30 per cent till date.

The Chief Secretary shared an SOP for involving the district and block administration with the District Magistrates and directed for preparation of a block-level weekly monitoring format to be shared with the BDOs who would submit the weekly progress report to the DMs.

Junior Engineers under the Block will be assigned specific schemes for regular monitoring and supervision of work.Block-wise list of working agencies would be shared with the BDOs for intense monitoring of work assigned to each agency.

The Chief Secretary also took stock of the Rastashree- Pathasree scheme that was inaugurated by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on March 28 and issued necessary directions to speed up the process of giving work orders for the rural roads that have been slow because of some technical issues. Pathashree-Rastashree project will witness the construction of 7,219 new roads and the upgradation of another 1,548. Over 29475 villages will reap the benefits of the scheme.12,000 km of roads in 22 districts will be constructed with state funds to the tune of Rs 3282.75 crore.