Bengal among top 4 states in tap water supply to households on a daily basis
Kolkata: For the first time since the Bengal government took up the Jal Swapna project, the state is consistently maintaining a position among the first top four in the country for the last 10 days as per the daily report of providing household tap water connection.
Even on July 14, Bengal topped the list among all states in providing highest number of tap water connections at households in a day. The data shows that 6,845 household connections were provided on July 14 across Bengal. Again, the state secured third position on July 21 by providing 3,478 tap water connections in a day. Only Odisha and Tamil Nadu were ahead of Bengal on that day by ensuring 6,904 and 4,348 tap water connections respectively on the same day.
On July 21, Bengal was ahead of states, including Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan. The data of July 21 shows that 10 percent of the total number of connections (30,313) across the country took place in Bengal itself.
It needs a special mention that the Mamata Banerjee government had launched the Jal Swapna project in July 2020 and provided tap water connections to 17.96 lakh households so far. Around 14.67 lakh households received tap water connections till the end of March 2021 and in the past four months, another 3.29 lakh connections were ensured.
The record shows that the number of connections has considerably increased in the past four months. The number of connections in the months of May, June and July were 41117, 82828 and 98374 respectively.
Despite the project having started gaining pace only after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee launched Jal Swapna project, the state has now set a target of providing connection to one crore households by the end of the current fiscal. Senior officers of the state Public Health Engineering department maintained that the target is to ensure tap water connection at every household in the state by 2024.
Accordingly, initiatives have also been taken to complete the major water treatment projects, including those that are getting developed in support of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) considering it will help to further improve the state's position in tap water connectivity. Initiatives have also been taken to ensure fast identification of land for implementation of the PHE's projects.
The Centre has allocated a grant of Rs 6,998.97 crore to the state for 2021-22 fiscal to ensure tap water supply to the maximum number of households in the state. The same was Rs 995.33 crore in 2019-20 and Rs 1,614.18 crore in 2020-21.
Pulak Roy, the state PHE minister, said: "Following directions of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, we are not leaving any stone unturned to ensure tap water connections in maximum number of houses".
