Drinking Water and Sanitation Minister CP Chaudhary has requested the Centre’s Drinking Water and Sanitation Ministry to increase financial contribution in the Centre’s schemes in the next financial year and apprised Union Minister Birendra Singh of hiccups in those schemes due to centre-state fund share.
While attending a national conference on sanitation and drinking water in New Delhi, Chaudhary raised issues being faced by the State in implementing the Rural Drinking Water Project.
“Centre’s schemes are getting affected because of slashed budget for those schemes. Therefore, we would request to increase the Centre’s contribution to 90 per cent for all central schemes from next financial year. This is also affecting projects being executed in areas facing poor water quality,” said Chaudhary.
He also requested Singh and Minister of State for Drinking Water and Sanitation, Ram Kripal Yadav to facilitate release of funds for National Rural Drinking Water Programme and Swachchh Bharat Mission to help Jharkhand meet the objectives of both the schemes before the end of the current financial year.
Jharkhand has so far received only `71-crore of total earmarked fund of `203-crore for rural drinking water project and only `17-crore of the total fund of `305-crore for Swacch Bharat Mission programme.
The DWSD Minister of Jharkhand assured the Union Ministers that the department will make all efforts to make Jharkhand open defecation free by October 2, 2019 and said that the availability of fund is the biggest hurdle in meeting the deadline. He added that Jharkhand needs `175-crore to meet the target and demanded 50 per cent of the budget immediately to construct 3-lakh toilets by March. The DWSD has set a target of constructing 6-lakh toilets in financial year 2016-17.
Chaudhary assured that the State Government will achieve targets of Namai Gange by the end of the current financial year.