No roads, but Modi Govt awards BJD Govt: Niranjan
PCC president Niranjan Patnaik on Friday alleged that people living in urban and rural areas in the State are deprived of safe drinking water throughout the year even as the States loan burden is going to touch Rs 1 lakh crore mark.
“The BJD Government has announced scores of schemes and spent huge amount of money from the State exchequer during the last 18 years. For this, the total debt burden is going to touch Rs1 lakh crore.
But the State Government has taken no steps to provide safe drinking water to the people,” alleged Patnaik.
The coastal districts of Puri, Ganjam, Kendrapada, Bhadrak, Baleswar, Jagatsinghpur and Cuttack are facing acute shortage of drinking water during summer.
A number of people are dying in diarrhoea and hepatitis by drinking contaminated water every year, he said.
He said while a reply in the Lok Sabha to an unstirred question revealed tht Odisha stands No. 5 in ground water contamination index and high content of fluoride and nitrate in ground water makes it unfit for human health, the CAG report has stated that Odisha is much behind in terms of piped water supply with only 3.7 per cent families in rural areas were supplied with pipe water.
He ridiculed that while 10,000 villages have no road connectivity still the BJD Government is getting award from the Modi Government.