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Dr. Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, Minister of Rural Development has said that government will make every possible efforts to ensure drinking water and toilet facility for every school by March, 2005. Dr. Singh was speaking at the concluding session of two-day conference-cum-workshop of the State Secretaries on initiatives relating to rural drinking water supply programme of the National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP), here today. The NCMP gives top most priority for providing drinking water to all sections in urban and rural areas and augmenting availability of drinking water sources with particular attention to problems of habitations in hilly terrains and cities in Southern States.
The Minister emphasised that water quality is another area of major concern in the sector. There is urgent need to launch a water quality monitoring and surveillance programme. “A National Programme is going to be launched soon in this regard in collaboration with Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry”, he added. He urged the State Government officials to ensure that this programme is operationalised without any further delay. It is important that a robust and reliable system is in place to detect chemical and bacteriological contamination of drinking water as these have great impact on the health of the population. This is a very important scheme and it must be accorded top priority, he added.
Dr. Singh said that it must be recognised that the challenge before the country today is to ensure both source and system sustainability. Certain fully-covered habitations occasionally ‘slip back’ into Partially Covered/Not Covered (PC/NC) category due to depletion of ground water. This is often the result of inadequate recharge of ground water due to drought or excessive withdrawal of ground water. This needs to be addressed. Towards this end, schemes for rainwater harvesting, recharge of ground water, which forms the source for at least 85% of rural water supply schemes, need to be taken up on priority. He asked state governments for preparation of perspective plan to face these problems.
During this conference-cum-workshop detailed discussions have been held on various issues involved in extension of reforms initiatives to cover the entire rural drinking water supply sector relating to coverage & accessibility; water quality; system and source sustainability; alternative delivery mechanisms and institutional reforms.
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