'Status Report of Drinking Water Quality in Urban Towns 2022-23' released

• 02 Jun 2023

Why in News?

On 31 May 2023, Dr. Subodh Agarwal, Additional Chief Secretary, Public Health Engineering Department, Rajasthan released the 'State Report on Drinking Water Quality in Urban Towns of Rajasthan 2022-23' at a state-level workshop of chemists of the Engineering Department.

Key Points:

• In the workshop, Additional Chief Secretary informed that in the year 2025-26, drinking water will be available through taps in 1 crore 7 lakh households of the state.
• A survey of 235 urban areas of the state has been done to prepare this report. In 89 towns, drinking water supply is based on surface water sources, in 70 towns based on both surface and groundwater and in 76 towns only based on groundwater.
• All 33 laboratories in the state are NABL accredited. Training for chemists and other personnel have been organized from time to time in collaboration with UNICEF and NEERI for the continuation of NABL certification of these laboratories.
• Technical support was provided to PHED by UNICEF in preparing the status report.
• Field engineers, chemists and officials associated with urban planning will get the benefit of the status report prepared on water quality.
• By the end of 2025, 90 percent of drinking water in Rajasthan will be available from surface sources and dependence on groundwater will be reduced to 10 percent after the completion of all the projects under the Jal Jeevan Mission. At present, 75 percent of the schemes in the state have the availability of surface sources.
• In these mega projects approved under the Jal Jeevan Mission, the state government's share will be 60 percent while the Center's will be 40 percent. After the completion of these projects, 5739 villages of 11 districts of the state will be shifted from groundwater to surface water-based schemes.
• It is worth mentioning that recently 5 major surface water-based drinking water projects worth Rs 23 thousand crore have been approved in the SLSSC meeting.
• In the Jal Jeevan Mission, the objective of the central and state governments is to provide potable water to every household. Under the mission, the requirement of the existing 130 crore litres of water to be delivered to every household will increase to three times.
• UNICEF State Head Isabelle Birdum said that traditional water harvesting systems will be used along with modern technology for water harvesting. Through the workshop, a roadmap will be prepared to take necessary steps in the future regarding water quality.