Jal Jeevan Mission: Malda to spend about Rs 320 cr in current fiscal
malda: Malda district will spend about Rs 320 crore in the current financial year under the Jal Jeevan Mission to supply piped drinking water to rural households.
The state government has ordered to speed up the process of installing piped water connections in rural areas, particularly keeping an eye on the extreme hot weather conditions prevailing during the summer season.
About Rs 2,200 crore has been allocated for Malda district to provide water connection to the families which are yet to receive piped water connection.
In Mathurapur of Manikchak block and Ratua 1 block in Malda, the project of pumping water from the river and delivering piped purified drinking water to households is in progress. The project is scheduled to be completed by December 2024.
Vaibhav Chowdhury, Additional District Magistrate (General), said: “There are more than 9 lakh households in the district. The target is to cover 100 per cent of the households. Rs 2,200 crore has been allocated for the implementation of the projects through the public health engineering (PHE) department and the arsenic department. Out of which, Rs 320 crore will be spent in the ongoing financial year. About 30 per cent households are already endowed with the facility and the rest are to be covered quickly.”
Nityananda Acharya, Executive Engineer, Arsenic Department, said: “The Jal Jeevan Mission project has allocated Rs 808 crore for providing arsenic-free water in the district. There is already a project to provide arsenic-free water in Manikchak. There will be one more project. This will enhance the existing water project in different places as needed. A target has been taken to supply water to 340,000 families through arsenic free water project by laying pipelines and constructing reservoirs.
The water will be collected from Fulhar River in Mathurapur of Manikchak and purified and supplied to blocks like Manikchak, English Bazar, Kaliachak 2 , among others. The previous project continues as usual.”
He further stated that the current intake point was at Shankartola in Mathurapur. There will be another intake point next to it. That water will be brought to the treatment plant at Kamalpur. The quantity of treated water will increase.
Where the pipelines need to be changed, about 49 new reservoirs will be constructed. The target of water supply to households in the previous project was met in 2015. The arsenic free water is now supplied to 1 lakh households from the previous project of arsenic free water.
With the new project, it will be possible to supply water to a total of 3,24,000 households. Among a total of almost 9 lakh 40 thousand families, 3 lakh 14 thousand are to get connections from the Arsenic free department. Out of this 1 lakh has already been connected. 6 lakh 16 thousand will be getting PHE connections. Out of this 2 lakh connections have already been given. The remaining will be completed through the PHE department. The project in Ratua will supply purified water by pumping it from the river. It is being done by PHE Malda.”
