The Jharkhand Government took the first step of solving drinking water and sanitation problems by launching Government of India (GOI) and World Bank supported Rural Water Supply and Sanitation-low Income States (RWSS-lIS) project on Thursday. It was followed by the online inauguration of Single Village Scheme at Patrayur Village of Khunti district by Drinking Water and Sanitation Minister Jai Prakash Bhai Patel.
Speaking over the relevance of this programme, Additional Chief Secretary Sudhir Prasad said, “RWSS-lIS project has been developed for identified districts of four states namely Jharkhand, Assam, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The identification is done on the basis of lowest percentage of households with rural piped water coverage as per Census 2011 figures. The project will be implemented in six districts of Jharkhand including Dumka, Saraikela-Kharsawan, East Singhbhum, Khunti, Palamau and Garhwa for a duration of six years with estimated cost of Rs 900 crores wherein World Bank, GOI, State Government and Community share a cost of 50 percent, 29 percent, 20 percent and 1 percent respectively.”
“A total of 751 schemes would be taken up in the project in three phases which include Single Habitation Schemes, Single Gram Panchayat Scheme with multiple habitation multi village schemes. It would cover a population of 14 lakhs comprising four lakhs of tribal population in 3435 habitations under 567 gram panchayats in the six selected districts of Jharkhand,” Prasad added.
Notably, the maintenance of this project will be done by Village Water and Sanitation Committees at each mentioned districts wherein the technical guidance will be given by State Drinking Water and Sanitation department. “In this way a village suffering with acute water crisis can get pipe water in each house. Toilets will also be made where ever required as part of this project, District Twining teams will be made to monitor the results in each village,” World Bank’s RWSS-lIS project Task Team leader Smita Mishra pointed out. “Panchayats will have to DPR, tender and other works concerned to this project,” Prasad added.
Similar project implemented in Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra is functioning successfully. Relating this fact, Mishra informed that a team from Jharkhand visited Kerala to watch the progress of this project.
Elaborating more about this project, Prasad said that they were mulling to launch the programme with tap water facility in the mentioned water crisis districts but the formation of District Project Management Consultant delayed the plan. He maintained, “The Drinking Water and Sanitation department will be expanding this project to other 18 districts of the state as well. “Minister Patel has signed the proposal to implement this project across the state a week ago.”