In a bid to ensure that there is no false reporting and demand of funds for repair of tube wells and hand pumps, Drinking Water and Sanitation department Secretary Aradhana Patnaik has directed geo tagging of all the dysfunctional water sources across the State.
In a letter issued by her to deputy commissioners of all the 24 districts on Monday, Patnaik directed that before the work of repair begins, all the dysfunctional water sources have to be geo tagged by uploading the latitude, longitude and photographs of the sources on government of India’s website www.indiawater.gov.in. The cost of geo tagging of water source is Rs. 25 each which will be funded by the department.
Patnaik said, “Geo tagging will help us in asset management as we will be able to know the exact problem source and the frequency of problems.”
She informed that this will also help the department set the priority of fixing the water sources.“If there are five water sources in one area and only two in the other, and one in each becomes dysfunctional, our priority would be to fix the one in that area where there are only two sources,” Patnaik said.
There are more than four lakh tube wells and hand pumps and more than 7000 mini water supply schemes across the state. "The demand for funds to repair and maintain water resources increases during summer. We are trying to get all the sources geo tagged before that so we can provide the funds accordingly," Patnaik said. In past there have also been cases of false reporting and double reporting. "There was a case in which funds were demanded for repair of the same tube well in two consecutive years. We later found that it was falsely reported. Geo tagging will help us ensure that such incidents do not happen again," the secretary said.
The district administrations have been asked to complete geo tagging by January 10 and once done, the work of repair in 129 drought hit blocks will be started on a priority basis.