Bengal gains 1st position in setting up water testing labs
Kolkata: West Bengal has achieved the first position among all states regarding setting up infrastructure for water quality monitoring and surveillance. At present, 220 water testing laboratories are functioning in the state among which 111 have already received NABL (National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories) accreditation.
Madhya Pradesh is second in this category having 103 NABL accredited water testing laboratories.
"Water testing laboratories play a major role in ensuring safe water supply to the people. They monitor the status of drinking water quality parameters like arsenic, fluoride, salinity, iron and bacteriological contamination throughout the year. In 2021-22, more than 3.73 lakh water sources have been tested," Pulak Roy, minister of the Public Health Engineering department said.
The PHE department has arranged training for Asha workers under the Utkarsh Bangla scheme. They have been provided with self-testing kits and are going door-to-door with these. They are testing water in households, at schools and also at Anganwadi centres.
The department is planning to roll out two mobile laboratory vans for awareness generation in rural areas through the Information Education Communication (IEC).
Bengal has already achieved the top position among all states in the country in providing tap water connections to households in the financial year 2021-22. It has provided over 23.37 lakh connections in this fiscal well ahead of the second and third rankers Odisha and Bihar which have given 17.47 lakh and 17.39 lakh connections respectively. BJP-ruled Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh are far behind, providing over 9.51 and 6.57 lakh connections respectively.
In the last fiscal, around 56,000 schools and 38,000 Anganwadi centres have been provided with running water facilities.
The target of the department is to ensure tap water connection to 1 crore 77 lakh families under the Jal Swapna project by the end of 2024. The project kicked off in July 2020 and nearly 38 lakh families have already been provided with tap water connections.
