State releases Rs 5.16 cr for water project

Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, December 11

To complete the laying of 3-km long pipeline project, aimed to provide safe drinking water to Faridkot town, which had been hanging in balance for the past over three years, the state government has now released Rs 5.16 crore.

Faridkot MLA Kushaldeep Singh Dhillon claimed the project was not completed as the Akalis started it days before the Assembly elections to get political mileage, but released no funds for it.

He said the project would now be completed in the next six months.

Besides facing shortage of funds, the scheme of laying 3-km long pipeline to supply safe drinking water to Faridkot town was caught between the Department of Technical Education and Industrial Training and Border Security Force (BSF).

Started with a cost of Rs 5.22 crore, the project of providing safe drinking water to Faridkot faced hurdles in January 2016 when the Water Supply and Sanitation Department (WSSD) had completed the laying of this 3-km long, one meter internal diameter pipeline from Raja Minor (a water distributary of the Abohar canal) to Faridkot city water supply project to give 18 cusec water supply (about 509 lt water every second) to the town.

Before the WSSD could release water in these pipelines, the BSF raised objection to the laying of about 400 m pipeline on its Faridkot-based campus.

Saying the passing of the pipeline through the BSF campus was a threat to its security, the BSF asked the WSSD to shift this pipe.

Then department then approached the Department of Technical Education and Industrial Training to shift it to the Industrial Training Institute (ITI), situated adjacent to the BSF campus here.

“We have got the permission to shift the pipeline from the BSF campus to ITI campus,” said Kushaldeep Dhillon.

However, besides increasing the project cost, the shifting of 400 m pipeline from the BSF campus to the ITI is set to increase the length of the pipeline by about 150 m, said sources in the WSSD.

About seven years ago, Faridkot residents launched a prolonged agitation, demanding the state government to shift the drinking water supply for the town from Sirhind Feeder to Abohar canal because of high pollution in Sirhind Feeder.

The Abohar canal is a distributary of Bhakra Canal and the water in this canal is comparatively of good quality. Raja Minor is a small distributary of the Abohar canal.

After many rounds of meetings between the Irrigation Department, Water Supply and Sanitation Department and Health Department, the work on the project started in 2015, but it kept lingering.