30 Aug : Drinking water tanks in Madhya Pradesh’s rural areas will be built keeping supply of 55 litres of water to each resident in view. An appeal will be made to Madhya Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission to allow the panchayats, whose power connection has been snapped, to pay the outstanding bills in installments and decrease the tariff by 50 per cent for running tap water scheme by Gram Panchayats. These decisions were taken at a meeting of advisory committee of Public Health Engineering Department here at the Mantralaya. The meeting was presided over by Public Health Engineering and Cooperative Minister Shri Gaurishankar Bisen. MLAs Shri Choudhary Mor Singh and Shri Bhaiyaram Patel were also present.
Public Health Engineering Minister Shri Bisen said that drinking water tanks in the rural areas should be built keeping in mind the supply of 55 litres of water to each person. Earlier, there was a provision of supplying 40 litres of water to every person. He also instructed to construct overhead drinking water tanks in all the districts. The meeting was informed that this year 3,000 water tanks will be built. The meeting decided to give citations to the officers and employees of those districts which will complete construction of drinking water tanks under Mukhyamantri Drinking Water Scheme first. The meeting decided that appeal should be made to the Energy Department not to recover penalty on the pending electricity bills of the panchayats whose connection of tap water schemes have been disconnected due to non-payment of bills and also give them the facility to clear the bills in installments. The Public Health Engineering Minister instructed the officers a study should be undertaken to run tap water scheme with solar energy and the capacity, availability and cost of such pumps should also be assessed.
The meeting was informed that drinking water arrangements will be made in all the rural schools by 2010-11. This year, a target has been set to supply water in the rural areas through 650 tap water schemes. Similarly, 461 more Ashram Shalas and hostels will be equipped with drinking water arrangements. Rs 25 crore have been provided to districts under Groundwater Augmentation Scheme. Those also present at the meeting included Principal Secretary Public Health Engineering Shri R.K. Swai, Chief Engineer Shri Sudhir Saxena and other senior officers.