State may involve gram panchayats in water scheme

Statesman News Service

MALDA, April 30: The state government is planning to engage gram panchayats in a house-to-house drinking water supply programme through pipeline in the rural areas with the help of the Public Health Engineering (PHE) department.Senior officers of the PHE in Malda said the civic bodies in rural areas would supply drinking water through pipeline and execute ‘house to house connection’. The gram panchayat, following the present system of municipalities, will collect Water Tax and other charges from the capable rural residents to provide water service. “The idea was conceived to provide arsenic free water supply where present report of execution of house to house drinking water connection and collection of maintenance cost of water supply failed,” said a senior engineer of the Malda PHE. For the last five years the state government has been trying hard to execute house to house connection from its surface water treatment plants in Kaliachak and Manikchak areas to collect at least Re. 1 per day and Rs 30 per month. The PHE minister Mr Goutam Deb had conducted meetings several times to yield results of the programmes but still had unsatisfactory results in procuring maintenance costs for the arsenic free water treatment plants. Speaking to this correspondent, the executive engineer PHE (arsenic decision) Mr AK Das said: “The newly constructed arsenic free water treatment plant at Balupur at Ratua is supplying drinking water in its commendable areas. After the end of panchayat polls we would launch a special drive for house to house water supply connection in the commendable areas with the help of panchayat samiti.” “We don't how many families will come forward to get water at their houses. But the government is planning to assign gram panchayats for this job in future,” he added.