Excelsior Correspondent
NEW DELHI, Feb 19: Minister for PHE, Irrigation & Flood Control, Sham Lal Sharma, has called upon the Centre Government to frame special guidelines for Himalayan States including Jammu and Kashmir while sanctioning new projects under different schemes in view of their tough topography and working conditions.
The Minister was speaking at a meeting of State Ministers and Secretaries in-charge of Rural Drinking Water Supply, which was convened by the Ministry for Drinking Water and Sanitation to review the progress of implementation of NRDWP at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi.
The meeting was chaired by the Minister of State for Drinking Water & Sanitation, B.M. Solanki.
Advocating relaxation in guidelines of development projects for hilly states, Sham urged upon the Centre to deeply consider the ground situation while approving new PHE schemes for Jammu and Kashmir. He said Jammu and Kashmir has unique topography and scattered population and require special attention to address the drinking water needs of people. He said that State Government has initiated several steps to provide safe drinking water to the rural population, but still there is a large population which is without tap water.
He said State Government is focusing on uncovered areas and conjunctive use of different water resources to move away from over dependence on single source to multiple sources like use of ground water, surface water and rainwater harvesting to make water supply schemes more sustainable. The stress has also been laid on operation and maintenance of systems to cut water losses and provide increased supply level at the house old level. The Government has also taken steps to improve water quality by testing of drinking water sources by CCDU trained people. So far the State has established 48 labs at divisional level/sub-divisional level to monitor the quality of water, he added.
He said that Government will focus on completion of all on-going projects in a time bound manner ensuring judicious use of funds. To improve the ground water level the Government has already decided to construct check dams and conservation of traditional sources of water in the rural areas. The initiative would help in improving irrigational facilities and usage of water in various forms.
Commissioner/ Secretary PHE, Dr. Pawan Kotwal and other senior officers also accompanied the Minister.
Follow our WhatsApp channel