Post News Network
Bhubaneswar: The state government has asked the Public Health Engineering Organisation (PHEO) to organise a special drive for regularisation of unauthorised water supply connections in civic bodies. The move aims to ensure universal access to safe drinking water and comes against the backdrop of the state government’s decision to provide water supply connections to all citizens, including landless people, in the various urban local bodies (ULBs).
The housing and urban development (H&UD) department has instructed PHEO to organise the drive for a month starting December 12.
“A simplification procedure has been adopted to meet the twin object of eliminating illegal connections and increasing the number of household connections of pipewater in the ULBs. This being a top priority of government, organise a special drive for one month (December 22 to January 21) to regularise unauthorised connections,” H&UD secretary G Mathi Vathanan wrote to engineer-in-chief public health (urban) K Laxmipati recently.
The secretary said that individual targets should be fixed for every executive engineer and assistance engineer for regularisation of unauthorised water supply connections and said their performance in this regard should be reflected in their annual performance reports for 2015-16. Awareness should also be created among the people about the drive, he said.
“At the end of the special drive, each executive engineer shall submit a certificate stating that there is no unauthorised connection in the division as on January 1, 2015,” he instructed.
The department has also instructed district collectors, SPs, and the commissioner of police to provide support for the peaceful completion of the drive. “The state government has taken this strong step to prevent recurrence of incidents such as the outbreak of jaundice in Sambalpur and other cities that killed around 30 persons last year. It has decided to ensure authorised water connection to all urban households,” said an official of the department.
The department had December 2, issued a notification simplifying the procedures for getting water connections in ULBs according to which any person living in these areas, including those who do not have their own land, can avail the facility.
