Potable water still a luxury in state

Parvesh Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 27

While the BJP government is busy making arrangements for the mega Haryana Swarna Jayanti celebrations, it has cared less for the people for whom potable water is still a luxury. Worse, the Haryana Public Health Engineering Department (PHE) does not have any state-level figure of installed reverse osmosis (RO).

Sources said the rural population must get 70 litres of water per capita per day (LPCD). In the urban areas, the government must ensure 135 LPCD in all towns having a population above 20,000. Areas where the population is below 20,000, the water supply must be 110 LPCD.

The PHE Department figures show that merely 2,615 villages get 70 LPCD water supply, while 4,062 are still receiving 40 to 55 LPCD. As many as 127 state villages are worst affected with less than 40 LPCD water supply.

Apart from villages, many urban areas are also facing water shortage. Out of the total main 78 towns of the state, 31 are receiving the mandatory supply of water of 135 LPCD, 25 towns 110 to 135 LPCD, while the remaining 22 are receiving 70 to 110 LPCD water supply.

“Since the formation of this government, there has been no improvement in water supply in our village. Our application for a booster has been pending with the PHE Department for many months,” alleged Rajesh, sarpanch of Badsikri village of Kaithal district.

Despite claims of the government that it has constructed 981 tubewells and 249 boosting stations for water supply in rural and city areas, residents continue to suffer for adequate water supply.

Joginder, a resident of Kakrod village of Jind, alleged that majority of surrounding villages were facing water shortage.

AK Kheterpal, engineer in-chief of PHE Department, said he did not have any data of the installed ROs across the state, nor did he show any interest in compiling the data. Even the directions of a senior IAS officer posted in the CM office failed to fetch required information from him.

The government has approved Rs811.4 crore for urban areas and Rs503.2 crore for rural areas for various water supply and sewerage schemes for 2016-17. In addition, Rs15 crore received under the Mahatma Gandhi Gramin Basti Yojana has been allocated to 217 ongoing schemes, but still there is no improvement.

“Our government has set up 33 sewage treatment plants in the state and construction of 28 such plants is under progress,” said Banwari Lal, Minister of State for Public Health Engineering.