Stressing on the importance of clean drinking water, Jal Shakti Minister Swatantra Dev Singh said the way water had reached houses in less than the last three years was a great example of public aspirations and public participation.
Presenting the details of Har Ghar Nal Yojana under Jal Jeevan Mission, Singh said the government had allocated Rs 3.70 lakh crore for next five years so that every house could get tap water.
“In rural areas, including inaccessible hills, people should get clean drinking water,” Singh said at a press conference here on Monday.
Singh said that continuous work was being done in the area of water conservation as Prime Minister Narendra Modi believed that it was important to end the water barrier for the development of the country.
“Utilising the water of the country's rivers is one of the top priorities of the government and so is it to ensure that sufficient water reaches the farmers' fields,” he said.
The jal shakti minister said that before Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed office, only 16 per cent of households in the country had access to tap water, whereas in just two years after the launch of the Jal Jeevan Mission, 49 per cent of households had pure tap water.
“Modi ji has set a target of providing pure water to every villager by the year 2024,” the minister said.
Singh went on to say that the Har Ghar Nal Yojana had changed the lives of lakhs of people. He said that in the first phase, work was in progress on a war footing to provide pure drinking water through taps from village to village in Bundelkhand and Vindhya region as well as in 66 districts of the state.
He said pure water supply had been started by giving water connections to 9,13,537 houses under the ongoing scheme.
The minister said that more than 13.47 per cent of pure water was being supplied in rural areas of UP. He said maximum work had been done on a priority basis in rural areas of Bundelkhand and Vindhyas where drinking water was the biggest problem.
To buttress his point, the minister said that drinking water supply reached 28,008 houses in the arsenic and Japanese encephalitis affected areas of the state.
Apart from providing pure water, the work of generating employment was being done on a large-scale, he said, adding that posts of plumber and electrician etc were being created on contract basis and local people were being linked with employment.
Singh also presented district-wise progress report of functional household tap connections,
“Under the ongoing plan, the Jal Jeevan Mission scheme has proved to be a boon for the people of Bundelkhand and Vindhya areas which were in the grip of arsenic in groundwater or other water-borne and infectious diseases,” the minister said.
