State targets 405 water supply projects by March

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Bhubaneswar: In view of possible water crisis in urban areas during the summer, the state government has decided to complete 405 water supply projects by the end of March.
This decision was taken at a high-level meeting held under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi at the Secretariat here Saturday.
It was decided in the meeting to complete ongoing 405 water supply projects by the end of March and another 33 by end of May this year. Further, at least 546 such projects will be executed by March 2019 in different phases.
Padhi directed the officials to expedite the construction work of the new projects and complete maximum number of projects before the ensuing summer. A month wise completion strategy and timeline was set in the meeting.
It was also decided at the meeting to complete the ongoing Bhubaneswar bulk water supply project covering Jatni, IIT, NISER, Infocity and adjoining areas under public private partnership (PPP) mode during this month.
The Chief Secretary asked the Housing and Urban Development (H&UD) department to ensure 100 per cent household connection in all the wards coming within the new project areas.
It was decided to organise wide awareness campaign and water melas (fairs) for motivating people to take household connection.
H&UD secretary G Mathivathanan appraised that all 113 urban local bodies (ULBs) have been asked to take up special water connection drive. It was decided to involve women SHGs, Mahila Arogya Samities (MAS) and Ward Kayan Samities (WKS) as water monitors for door-to-door campaign and handholding support to the people for taking water connection.
The urban poor will be provided the facility and can pay the connection charges in easy installments, said the secretary. The households taking connection during the campaign period will also be benefited financially as they will not be required to pay the fee fixed for cut down and repair of roads, he pointed put. H&UD special secretary Prem Kumar Jha said 910 drinking water projects worth `3013 crore have been taken up in different civic bodies.
Out of the total projects, 752 were taken up under State Plan while 130 were taken up under AMRUT, eight under Urban Infrastructure Development Scheme for Small & Medium Towns (UIDSSMT), 18 under District Mineral Fund (DMF) and two others under PPP mode.
So far, 268 projects have already been completed whereas another 642 are in different stages of implementation, Jha said. During the meeting, it was revealed that new water testing laboratories at Bhubaneswar (two projects), Puri, Cuttack and Berhampur have been functioning. Padhi directed to complete another four labs at Samablapur, Rourkela, Balasore and Baripada by this month end.
The department was also asked to develop an SOP for regular water testing from each ULB at least once in a week.  PNN