BHOPAL | Friday, March 12, 2010 | Email | Print |  | Back
Lack of clean drinking water in rural areas a matter of concern, says Bisen
Staff Reporter | Bhopal
Public Health, Engineering and Cooperative Minister Gaurishankar Bisen has said that it is a matter of concern that arrangements of clean drinking water are lacking in the rural areas even after 62 years of India’s independence.
He has instructed the filed staff of Public Health Engineering Department to give top priority to supply of clean drinking water to people, ensure construction with quality and in time-bound manner and suggest ways to increase groundwater level. Bisen was addressing a workshop here on Thursday. The workshop was held on the topic ‘assessment of training requirement of engineers’.
Bisen said that the department faces the biggest challenge of providing clean drinking water to people. He said that water of new as well as old water bodies should be tested regularly so that people can get quality water. Bisen said that rainfall has become erratic and on the other hand our groundwater sources are being overexploited. We should give a serious thought to this state of affairs. He said that several tap water schemes are lying out of order in the rural areas. They should be repaired on priority basis.
He called for completing schemes within the stipulated time with special attention on quality. Stressing the need to curb misuse of water, he said, “We will have to improve our entire system and make it accountable. Only then we can achieve results.”
Describing training as essential, Bisen said that schemes are chalked out at the top level but implemented at the lowest level. He said that training enables the field staff to implement schemes in an effective manner. He said that the trained officers should also percolate their experience and ability to the lower staff. Principal Secretary Public Health Engineering RK Swai, Chief Engineer Sudhir Saxena and senior officers of the department and UNICEF were present at the workshop.
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