Guidelines issued for NTR Sujala water scheme

September 17, 2014 12:40 am | Updated 08:05 pm IST - VIJAYAWADA:

After inking a joint initiative with the Centre on uninterrupted power supply for a major section of consumers, the government has now focussed attention on fulfilling its another poll promise, supply of safe drinking water under NTR Sujala Pathakam. Municipal Administration and Urban Development Principal Secretary D. Sambasiva Rao has issued a series of guidelines for effective implementation of the scheme aimed at providing 20 ltrs of water at Rs. 2 to each household in slums and habitations of urban local bodies, slated to commence from Oct 2 coinciding with Gandhi Jayanti. Accordingly, the district collectors concerned had been asked to go for reverse osmosis technology in case of water contains total dissolved solids including fluoride, nitrate and iron of more than 500 mg a litre.

The authorities had been asked to opt for electrolytic de-fluoridation technology if fluoride is more than one mg a litre with all other parameters within the standards while Terafil technology is recommended for water if iron is in excess of 0.3 mg. The government had recommended the use of ultra filtration technology along with ultra violet treatment for water with turbidity of more than 2 NTU (nephelometric turbidity unit). “Disinfection shall be integral part of all the treatments,” the order issued on Tuesday said.

The municipal councils should identify the habitations/slums where water quality is an issue and ensure that necessary infrastructure is available for installation of water treatment plant with power connection. The responsibility of providing water to these treatment plants has been entrusted to the respective municipal bodies. The operation and maintenance of the plants once installed would be entrusted to self help groups, slum level federations, town level federations or NGOs as identified by the municipal councils on specific terms and conditions.

Interestingly, the government wanted the municipal authorities concerned to identify potential donors, industrial & corporate houses, philanthropists and NGOs who would like to participate in the programme whose spirit is “not for profit but service oriented”. Priority should be given to slums where no drinking water distribution systems exists, slums where quality of drinking water is not fit for human consumption and places where there was presence of distribution system, but no drinking water is being supplied. The order also made mention about the expected cost of installation of the treatment plants and the urban local bodies had been asked to cover all habitations/slums where there was deficiency of potable water in a phased manner.

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