State to provide tap water to 1.14 lakh anganwadis

Kolkata: The Mamata Banerjee government is all set to provide tap water connection to 1.14 lakh anganwadis after ensuring the same to 4.35 lakh households in the past three months under the project Jal Swapno.

The move of the state government comes crucial ahead of the virtual meeting of the Jal Shakti Ministry with all state governments. Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat will be holding the meeting with concerned ministers and senior officers of all the states on November 3.

According to the top brass of the state government, the state Public Health Engineering (PHE) minister Soumen Mahapatra along with senior officers of his department will be attending the meeting from Bengal.

On July 6, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had launched the project Jal Swapno worth Rs 58,000 crore with an aim to provide tap water connection to two crore households in Bengal in the next five years.

A senior officer of the state PHE department said that the work to provide tap connection at households is going on smoothly and so far it has been provided to 4.35 lakh households. "Now a move has been taken to provide tap water connection to all anganwadis that is around 1.14 lakh in the state. At the same time steps would also be taken to ensure the same in all 80,000 primary and upper primary school buildings," the officer said, adding that there is a source of safe drinking water in all these school buildings. But the endeavour is to provide tap water connection to all. At present around 18 percent of these buildings are under the coverage of tap water connection.

The officer further said that a detailed assessment will be carried out in connection with the both the projects and as per the preliminary planning tap water connection will be initial provided to around 15,000 to 20,000 anganwadis in the first phase and no stone will be left unturned to ensure the same by the end of 2020-21 fiscal.