The State Public Health Engineering Department had installed around 1800 hand pumps during the past three years in Surajpur district.
Officials on Tuesday informed that around 755 hand pumps were installed in 2013-14 financial year, 797 in 2014-15 and 250 hand pumps during the last eight months of 2015, officials stated.
The number of recent installations cover 57 hand pumps in Odagi block, 56 in Surajpur block, 46 in Pratappur, 43 in Bhaiya Than, 29 in Prem Nagar and 19 hand pumps in Ramanuj Nagar.
Meanwhile, out of the 797 hand pumps of 2014-15, 203 hand pumps were installed at Pratappur, 164 in Surajpur, 120 in Ramanuj Nagar, 115 in Bhaiya Than, 113 in Prem Nagar and 82 in Odagi.
On the other side, the 755 hand pumps set up in 2013-14 include 181 in Surajpur, 135 in Pratappur, 124 in Ramanuj Nagar, 120 in Odagi, 109 in Prem Nagar and 86 hand pumps in Bhaiya Than.
According to the Public Health Engineering Department officials as many as 30 power pumps were also installed in 2014-15 financial year. Overall, the State Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) has installed 33,327 hand pumps during the past more than two years in the State.
During the period, a total of 1000 power operated pumps were also installed, officials stated. The Department carried out digging of a total of 40,016 bore wells in the State out of which 34,978 were successful.
PHED is providing safe and clean drinking water to the residents of 1,145 habitats in the State, officials stated. Earlier, the people in various districts had been getting drinking water with excess iron, hard water and fluoride content, they stated.
Water purification plants have been installed to limit iron and fluoride contents and R.O. (Reverse Osmosis ).State PHED Minister Ramsevak Paikra had initiated the works on nine ‘Nal-Jal’ Yojanas (tap water projects) at a cost of Rs276.67 crore.
The PHED has installed as many as 251 new solar powered pumps in various districts in rural pockets of Chhattisgarh, officials stated. The Department also installed a total of 8,950 new hand pumps during 2014-15 under the National Rural Drinking Water Mission in the rural pockets of the State.
There were a total of 10,373 tube wells dug up by the Department in the entire State out of which 8,950 wells were declared successful. During the last financial year, 1,034 new hand pumps were established in rural schools and 1,881 in Anganwadis.
As many as 141 new tube wells were dug in the urban pockets of the State out of which 126 were declared successful during the last financial year. Notably, Chhattisgarh ranks first in the country in terms of providing drinking water through solar powered pumps, officials stated. Out of the total number of solar pumps installed in the entire country in financial year 2013-14, nearly 90 per cent of the solar pumps were installed in Chhattisgarh itself, they claimed.
An amount of Rs65.28 crore has been spent on 6503 pure and safe drinking water schemes by the Public Health and Engineering Department (PHED) during the past six years in Bastar district.