keep touring villages to ensure availability of drinking water

 PHE Minister Shri Bisen reviews situation at high-level meeting

Officers and field staff of Public Health Engineering Department must continue to visit the rural areas with a view to ensuring availability of drinking water during the entire summer season. Public Health Engineering and Cooperative Minister Shri Gaurishankar Bisen, who has just returned from an intensive tour of 21 districts, gave this instruction at a high-level meeting on availability of water here today

Public Health Engineering Minister Shri Bisen exhorted officials of the department to remain alert and vigilant so that public life is not disturbed due to water crisis. He said that department's officers should remain in constant touch will villages so that problem arising there can be solved immediately. Shri Bisen instructed the officers to undertake all the necessary works for ensuring and maintaining drinking water availability on priority basis. He instructed the officer to increase the length of riser-pipes of the hand-pumps in the areas where groundwater table has sunken further and ensure availability of riser-pipes in all the districts. He said that concerning officers will not be spared if hand-pumps were found out-of-order despite availability of groundwater. He said that spare parts of hand-pumps should be made available in all the districts.

Shri Bisen said water should be made available by pumping through single-phase motors in the areas where the tube-wells have stopped due to sinking of water table. The Public Health Engineering Minister said that a fresh survey of tap water schemes should be conducted so that ground reality comes to fore and fresh strategy can be chalked out on this basis of this information. He said that the schemes based on surface water should also be intensified with a view to finding out a long-lasting solution to water crisis. He instructed for expediting works to treat water in the areas affected by fluoride problem. Shri Bisen asked the officers to ensure that the water problems of those districts, where he has paid visits recently, should be solved at the earliest.