Punjab Government has chalked out a comprehensive plan to provide safe drinking water in arsenic, iron and fluoride affected villages of the state. For the purpose, Rs 540 crore would be spent on five projects to provide safe drinking water to 563 villages.
“The tireless and consistent efforts of the Water Supply and Sanitation Department has borne fruits as the Department has been successful in getting approval for five prestigious projects worth Rs 540 crore from the Centre’s National Sub Mission on Water Quality and the World Bank for the supply of safe drinking water to the villages affected by arsenic, iron and fluoride,” said the state Water Supply and Sanitation Minister Razia Sultana.
She said that the State Government is also all set to establish treatment plants and water testing laboratories in affected districts to remove toxic material from the surface and groundwater sources.
“The work on these five projects would be awarded by November 2018. Once completed, these projects would provide safe drinking water to 563 villages of Fatehgarh Sahib, Patiala, Amritsar and Gurdaspur districts affected from arsenic and fluoride,” she said.
Sultana said that two water testing laboratories at SAS Nagar and Patiala have also been accredited by the National Board of Accreditation of labs (NABl) and soon, one more advanced laboratory, equipped with facilities for analyzing heavy metals and other containments, will be established at Amritsar.
About 2,364 RO plants have already been installed in various quality affected villages of Punjab including Malwa belt whereas another 74 plants are under progress and 153 more RO plants will be installed in fiscal year 2018-19, she saif.
Highlighting the importance of toxic substances removal plants, Sultan said that arsenic, iron and fluoride which are considered asmost dangerous substances in surface and groundwater sources for human consumption would be removed with the high-end technology of these plants.
“These plants are capable enough to remove extra fluoride, arsenic and iron from the drinking water which have been proved toxic for humans and other living beings hence its removal is paramount to healthy living,” she added.
Three arsenic removal plants have been commissioned on pilot basis to establish technology for iron and arsenic removal in amritsar. On the successful demonstration of the technology, around 70 more arsenic removal plants are being installed to cover 102 villages mainly in the districts of Amritsar and Gurdaspur.
“Two surface water supply schemes are under progress to cover 45 water quality affected villages of Nurpur Bedi block of Rupnagar district and 85 water quality affected villages of Moga district. The likely date of commissioning of the projects is August 2018 and August 2019 respectively,” she said.