85 Moga villages to get clean potable water

Kulwinder Sandhu

Tribune News Service

Moga, December 4

The Punjab Government will provide clean potable water through the canal system under the Surface Water Supply Scheme with the assistance of the World Bank in 85 villages of Baghapurana and Nihal Singh Wala sub-divisions in the district. The underground water in these villages has traces of uranium and arsenic, posing threat to people’s health.

The project estimated to cost Rs 176.11 crore funded by the World Bank will provide potable water to nearly four lakh residents residing in 70,000 houses. A centralised water treatment plant to clean water is being set up at Daudhar village.

The executive engineer of Water Supply and Sanitation department JS Chahal said 85 per cent of the work had been completed and the project was expected to be implemented by the mid of 2020. As per the information, these 85 villages were reported to be affected by traces of uranium and heavy metals.

Chahal said this project would provide potable water to the households in the selected villages and water testing laboratory would be set up to keep a check on water quality periodically.

The drinking water to these villages will be supplied from the Abohar branch of the canal. The water will be filtered using modern technologies and then supplied to the people through pipelines.

It may be mentioned that harmful traces of uranium and heavy metals had been found in the underground water in more than 150 villages. There are a total of 337 villages in the district.

The traces of uranium had been found in the underground water in 82 villages and the district headquarters in Moga city, aluminium contents in 21 villages; nitrate, iron, nickel, lead in 52 villages and mercury, selenium in one village each. Iron content has been found in excess in 35 villages.

Earlier, the department had installed more than 200 reverse osmosis plants in 193 villages; besides, five in Baghapurana town and one at the mini-secretariat in Moga city to provide clean drinking water to the people.