To review the ‘Uttarakhand Rural Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Project’, which is based on community participation, Chief Secretary Subhash Kumar convened a meeting in Secretariat on Friday. Uttarakhand was the leading State in the country to develop drinking water projects proposed by the villagers, implemented and run by them He added that efforts would also be made to get Uttarakhand in first position among ‘Nirmal Grams’.The project would directly employ 6,000 people. So far 39,000 had been trained at the primary level in the State. It has created awareness amongst villagers and especially women. The drinking water and sanitation project had been implemented in 7,536 villages by March 2014.
This year, the project has reached 495 habitations with an investment of Rs66 crores. It is a drive to ensure villages with total sanitation facilities by 2022. This involves development of private toilets, as well as in schools, anganwadi centers, solid and liquid waste management and capability development.
It was stated that so far 91,084 private toilets have been set up. So far, 525 village panchayats have been awarded Nirmal Gram awards. This year, also, a proposal has been sent for awarding 144 village Panchayats.
The Uttarakhand Government is about to introduce the Uttarakhand Government Drinking Water Purification Pride Award project. Under this, the first, second and third winners will be awarded Rs20,000, Rs15,000 and Rs10,000 respectively. The state government has distributed 6,502 field test kits, tested 21,077 water samples and purchased 5,827 new kits.