MlA Champadevi Pawle inaugurated the R.O. Water Purification Plant at the Sonhat Block Development headquarters in the district. The plant was established at a cost of Rs7 lakh. Pawle said with the inauguration of the R.O. Water Purification Plant the gulf between the rich and the poor has been reduced. Rich sections of the society consume mineral water. Poor people also can consume five litres mineral water from the ATM at a nominal rate of Rs1.
Pawle congratulated the district authorities for opening the Water Purification Plant. The common citizens will be free from water-borne diseases. They can get five litres of pure water by dropping Rs1 coin in the ATM. Collector S Prakash said the first R.O. purification plant in the entire State was inaugurated at district headquarters Baikuntpur.
He said that on the pattern of Karnataka the R.O. purification plant was started at Sonhat. It may be mentioned here that as per last year’s data, Chhattisgarh government had installed as many as 83 ‘Reverse Osmosis’ (RO) plants in the regions facing problems of salinity in water used for drinking purposes.
This apart, there are now 1,252 plants which remove high iron content from drinking water besides 227 plants clearing away high fluoride content from water supplied to the users in various parts of the State, officials stated. Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) officials informed that the government has established 26 district-level laboratories in the State for checking fluoride content in ground water sources.
During the last three years, as many as 56,388 samples collected from ground water sources across the state have been examined in the aforesaid laboratories. Out of these, 328 samples were found high in fluoride content. The government spent more than Rs15.62 crore during 2012-13 for implementation of various schemes formulated for ensuring safe drinking water to the people living in fluoride affected areas.
The number of samples tested for fluoride content in each of the district-level laboratories established in 26 districts of the State till September last year were as follows- 7541 in Jashpur district, 5495 in Ambikapur district, 5102 in Sukma district, 4292 in Durg district, 3754 in Rajnandgaon district, 3386 in Raipur district, 3365 in Narayanpur district, 3253 in Kabeerdham district, 2711 in Korba district, 2431 in Dhamtari district, 2258 in Bilaspur district, 1876 in Bijapur district, 1788 in Koriya district, 1731 in Dantewada district, 1466 in Kanker district, 1387 in Raigarh district, 1079 in Bastar district, 922 in Janjgir Champa district, 547 in Balrampur-Ramanujganj district, 500 in Gariaband district, 420 Bemetara district, 388 in Mahasamund district, 373 in Mungeli district, 183 in Balod district and 144 in Surajpur district. Moreover, in the month of May last year, the State government has established a total of 105 ‘Flouride Removal Plants’ in settlements of 44 villages in Bastar division.
In September last year, Chief Minister Raman Singh had approved Rs1190 crore under the State government’s ‘Nal-Jal Scheme’ for eliminating salinity in water supply being made to nearly 152 villages of Bemetara district from Shivnath River. The PHED officials informed that under ‘Nal-Jal’ scheme nearly 1.74 lakh people residing in several villages of Bemetara, Navagarh and Saja block will be benefitted. Under the scheme, 751 km of pipelines and 139 overhead tanks will be facilitated to ensure the supply of safe drinking water in villages.