A state level rural drinking water supply and maintenance workshop and review meeting of all 35 RWSS Divisions was conducted here under chairmanship of Pancdhayati Raj and Drinking Water Department’s Principal Secretary Sushil Kumar Lohani.

The State has come up with SOPs on preparedness, mitigation and maintenance of hand pump tube wells and Rural Piped Water Supply Projects before approaching Summer, 2024 and districts were sensitised that the below instructions should be adhered to scrupulously for ensuring availability of drinking water in each and every habitation of the State without fail.

Hundred per cent check of tube wells and PWSs shall be taken up on priority as a part of preventive maintenance. The routine preventive maintenance shall be done in a mission mode and it should be ensured that the Blocks shall procure adequate spare parts, paints, riser pipes etc. by utilizing the Finance Commission Grants taking into consideration the indents of the Gram Panchayat on the recommendation of JE/AE, RWSS.

Water supply with focus on provision of Tap water supply to all Primary Schools / Anganwadi Centers / Rural haats shall be ensured. Regular review and monitoring of the drinking water situation shall be done by convening weekly review meeting at Block level on each Saturday.

The State has now covered 66% Rural Households with tap Water Connection as reported in the IMIS portal. Around 9,671 Villages have been saturated with 100% Tap connection.

The State has prepared its saturation Plan for total 47,274 villages to be covered with Functional Household Tap connection. 31854(65%) of the villages are covered with mega piped Water Supply, 15420 (35%) covered with Small and Solar. Apart from these there are 4,79,664 tubewells are also made available in all the villages.

207 Mega piped water supply projects worth Rs. 35,920 Crs. Out of which 2 are under tendering, 189 mega Projects are under implementation and 16 Mega projects have been completed and it is aspired to completed around 20 Mega projects by March, 2024.

The department has also taken up 14,256 single village projects worth 18,000 Crores with an aim to provide Functional household Tap connection.

There are 77 Water testing Labs in the state. Water samples from 2.28 lakh sources and delivery points are tested in laboratories across the state every year.

NABL accreditation has been done for 23 Laboratories, applied for 3 and 7 in pipeline for submission. Efforts are being undertaken to get NABL accreditation for all district laboratories during the FY 2023-24.
The pace of progress of coverage of villages with functional household tap connection was reviewed in detail and Divisions were given instructions to expedite the implementation in the field.

A detailed discussion was made on all the aspects of implementation and were instructed to resolves all issues on time and focus on timely completion of the projects.

Director, Drinking Water & Sanitation, Engineer–in-Chief, RWSS, Chief Engineers, Additional Chief Engineers, also attended the meeting.

According to a release from Chief Minister’s Office (CMO), the problems faced by people in getting drinking water at Athgarh and Narsinghpur in Cuttack district, Athmallik in Angul and Pipli in Puri were reviewed at a high-level meeting.

It was decided to complete the under-construction pipe water supply projects at Narsinghpur and Athgarh. Besides, the quality of construction work was also stressed.

The meeting also decided to take urgent steps to resolve the problems in pipe water supply projects in Pipili after complaints were received about theft of water at some points of the project.

In order to ensure seamless pipe water supply in rural areas, it was decided to imlement Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA). It would detect the errors in the supply system from the projects and find ways to resolve those.