DW BUREAU / Chandigarh

The Water Supply and Sanitation department has been successful in getting approval for five prestigious projects worth Rs 540 crore from the National Sub Mission on Water Quality of Union Government and World Bank for the supply

of safe drinking water to the villages affected by arsenic, iron and fluoride.

Besides this, the Punjab Government is also all set to establish treatment plants and water testing laboratories in affected districts to remove toxic material from the surface and ground water

sources.

Stating this here on Friday, Water Supply and Sanitation Minister Razia Sultana said that work on these five projects, which have been approved by the National Sub Mission on Water Quality, would be awarded by November, 2018.

She said that once completed, these projects would provide safe drinking water to 563 villages of Fatehgarh Sahib, Patiala, Amritsar and Gurdaspur districts, affected from arsenic and fluoride. Ms Sultana said that two ‘Water Testing Laboratories’ at SAS Nagar and Patiala have also been accredited by the National Board of Accreditation of Labs (NABL) and soon, one more advanced laboratory equipped with facilities for analysing heavy metals and other containments would be established at Amritsar.

About 2364 RO plants have already been installed in various quality-affected villages of Punjab, including Malwa belt, whereas another 74 plants are under progress and 153 more RO plants will be installed in fiscal year 2018-19, she added.

Highlighting the importance of these toxic substances removal plants, Ms Sultan said that arsenic, iron and fluoride, which are considered as most dangerous substances in surface and ground water sources for human consumption, would be removed with the high end technology of these plants.

(editor@dailyworld.in)