300 piped water schemes restarted

Bhopal, May 09: With a view to providing drinking water in drought conditions, the Public Health Engineering Department has restarted 300 piped water schemes which had been lying out of order in the state. Public Health Engineering Minister Choudhary Chandrabhan Singh has issued instructions to department's field officers to undertaken regular visits to areas under their jurisdiction and to give latest information about piped water schemes and hand pumps to the concerning district collector.

During the last six months, the Public Health Engineering Department has undertaken digging of tube wells, increase in riser pipes of hand pumps and hydro fracturing in tube wells apart from repairing and restarting out of order piped water schemes. In all, 300 piped water schemes have been restarted by the department which includes 17 each of Bhopal and Indore, 68 of Ujjain, 16 of Gwalior 20 of Chambal, 13 of Sagar, 104 of Jabalpur and 45 piped water schemes of Rewa divisions. During this period from November 7 to April 8, as many as 568 new piped water schemes were launched.

Similarly, availability of drinking water has been ensured in many areas where water table had sunken by increasing the length of riser pipes in hand pumps. Hydro fracturing of one thousand 183 tube wells has also been undertaken during this period. As many as 14,742 hand pumps have been dug during this period throughout the state including 7129 in Jabalpur division followed by 1252 in Bhopal, 4688 in Indore, 1525 in Ujjain, 1679 in Gwalior, 6257 in Chambal, 2494 in Sagar, 7129 in Jabalpur and 6912 in Rewa division. PHE Minister has instructed all the field officers of the department to undertake regular visits to the areas under their jurisdiction and give information about maintenance of piped water schemes, hand pumps and tube wells to the concerning collector.