Rural polls: Govt speeding up drinking water projects

6 December 2012

TAMLUK, 6 DEC: In view of the panchayat election in 2013, the state government has plans to expedite its rural water sources projects under state plan in all the 19 districts. Projects of sinking, re-sinking, conversion or rejuvenation of water sources, especially tube-wells and wells, will be implemented at these places in the districts where drinking water crisis is acute.
To implement all the pending projects along with new ones for this financial year, the state government has already sanctioned Rs 1415.49 lakh for the districts and the Public Health Engineering department has asked all the district magistrates to carry out the order. Figures from the Integrated Management Information System (IMIS) for the rural water supply sector reveal that West Bengal failed to meet national targets in rural drinking water and sanitation in the 2011-12 financial year.
The Union ministry of rural drinking water and sanitation had published a report on rural drinking water supplies in April, which revealed that West Bengal used only 67.2 per cent of its Rs 267.88 crore allocation last year.
According to an IMIS report, over a third of the wells in West Bengal are considered arsenic-affected and iron contaminated. Despite this, the PHED has failed to meet national targets on water quality and surveillance training, chemical field testing and water testing with field test kits. However, West Bengal is one of the 14 states recorded to be successfully carrying out the transfer of public water systems to the panchayats, which involves training district workers in the operation and maintenance of hand pumps. Realising the lack in implementing rural water sources projects in the ‘crisis areas’ of the districts, Mr A Bhattacharyya, joint secretary to the government of West Bengal, has instructed all the district magistrates asking for “utilisation certificates of the present sanction be submitted by December, 2012 and also utilisation certificates for previous sanctions be submitted immediately to this department for showing to finance department which is pressing hard for the same at the time of releasing funds. No further fund can be sanctioned unless utilisation certificates are received from all previous sanction”.
He also instructed that the fund may be utilised, if necessary, for conversion of existing water sources by submersible pump sets and for energisation of ready units. Some ‘spot sources’ should be created in SC/ST areas, Mr Bhattacharyya stated in his letter. According to the state's house-listing and housing census -2011, as high as 36.5 per cent of total households in West Midnapore were found to be travelling more than 500 meters from their homes to get drinking water compared to 30.4 per cent of total households in 2001.
If the percentage is converted into actual figures, a total of 4,10,884 families had drinking water sources more than 500 meter from their houses in rural areas of the district. “This figure is obviously high when any one goes through rural fringes of Junglemahal. There are several areas in Belpahari, Banspahari and Kantapahari where tribal people walk more than a kilometre to fetch drinking water,” said a social activist.
Meanwhile, indiscriminate pumping of water by various means has taken a toll on the groundwater level in the coastal areas of the district.
The situation in blocks like Moyna, Patashpur-I and II, Bhagawanpur-I and II, Khejuri, Contai, Chandipur, Nandigram-I and II, Tamluk, Haldia, Panskura and Kolaghat is alarming as lakhs of farmers in these blocks, cut off from surface water sources, are relying heavily on groundwater for irrigation. biswabrata goswami