Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan gave directives to provide potable water to cover around one thousand villages keeping in view the future needs. Make Public Health Engineering department responsible to maintain these rural potable water schemes. Chouhan was reviewing the maintenance of group tap water (Nal-Jal) schemes at Mantralaya on Thursday.
Chouhan said that all the rural potable water schemes should be completed within time limit. Necessary amount to maintain hand pumps will be provided by the state government. Also reasonable water tax should be levied under the rural potable water scheme to enable villagers to bear it easily. Besides, Chouhan has told the committee of Additional Chief Secretary Narmada Valley Development, Additional Chief Secretary Panchayat and Rural Development and Principal Secretary Public Health Engineering to submit suggestions to reduce cost of large group potable water schemes.
It is informed in the meeting that at present 20 rural group potable schemes are in progress.
Moreover, at present 11,796 rural potable water schemes are functional out of 15,270 schemes established in the state. Also, 5.16 lakh hand pumps are operational out of 5.23 lakh hand pumps of the state. An amount of Rs 387 crore has been allotted to the state under the National Rural Potable water Scheme.
Chief Secretary BP Singh, Additional Chief Secretary Finance AP Shrivastava, Principal Secretary Panchayat and Rural Development RS Julaniya, Principal Secretary to CM Ashok Varnval, Principal Secretary PHE Manoj Govil and Chief Engineer PHE GS Damore were present in the meeting.