Of the 30,272 wards in villages having contaminated sources of groundwater, as many as 29,180 of them have been provided with safe tap drinking water under the CM Rural Drinking Water Scheme, according to a communique received from the state public Health engineering department (PHED).
The scheme is popularly calledHar Ghar Nal Ka Jal. By corollary, PHED has 96.4% achievement to its credit. The drinking water being supplied to the wards concerned is free from contamination of fluoride, arsenic and iron content beyond the permissible limits.
The department also maintained that the Centre has also conducted a third-party survey of the piped water supply being provided in the villages. According to this survey, 95% of the villages have been getting uninterrupted piped drinking water supply.
As per the Centres survey done with regard to the provision of piped water, most of the habitations have been getting Safe drinking water.
Of the 1.08 lakh human habitations in the state, only 467 still had contaminated water, the central survey report has noted, adding that they included six villages having arsenic contamination and one fluoride, while water available in 460 other habitations had iron content beyond permissible limits.
It has taken five years to make an achievement in this regard, as the wards with contaminated ground water had already been mapped out, but the scheme to provide piped water supply was started by PHED in 2016. Besides, as many as 1,379 wards have been covered under 11 different multi-village piped drinking water supply system projects.
At that point of time, groundwater in 3,791 wards of 11 districts had fluoride contamination, while groundwater in 14 other districts had arsenic poisoning in their 4,742 wards. Groundwater of as many as 21,739 wards in 12 districts had iron content beyond approved limits.