Punjab Water Supply and Sanitation Minister Surjit Singh Rakhra today announced that Punjab Government is committed to provide drinking water and toilet facility to every household in the state and 100 per cent target would be completed by June 2016.While inaugurating the Regional Advanced Water Testing Laboratory at Water Works Complex, Mohali, Mr. Rakhra said that this laboratory would play a pivotal role to provide potable drinking water to rural population. He said installation of reverse osmosis was not the complete solution to get potable water but sometimes these also destroys key contents present in the water and this laboratory would provide all the solutions for pure drinking water. Mr. Rakhra said it was the first lab of the north region, which would also cater the needs of neighbouring states to detect the heavy metals in water. He said this lab has been set up by the Department of Water Supply and Sanitation for the analysis of Uranium and Heavy Metals in the drinking water.
The Minister informed that this laboratory has been equipped with two main equipments namely Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS) & Ion Chromatograph at an approximate cost of Rs. 2.00 crore. He said these equipments were so sensitive that they could give a reading accurate up to the level of 1000th part of one milligram besides detecting uranium and heavy metals like aluminium, Arsenic, Lead, Chromium and Cadmium in water. He said that Ion Chromatograph would test parameters like Fluoride, Chloride, Bromide, Nitrate, Phosphate, Sulphate, Sodium, Potassium etc in water.Rakhra informed that Bhabha Atomic Research Center Mumbai had started the presence of uranium in water in 2010. He said with the reports of presence of Uranium in the ground water of Punjab it was decided to get all the ground water based schemes tested for the presence of Uranium. He said to become self-dependent on this front the testing of Uranium in water, the state had decided to set up its own advanced laboratory.
During the Inauguration function, Sh. N.K. Sharma, Chief Parliamentary Secretary, Sh. Suresh Kumar, IAS, Additional Chief Secretary, Sh. Ujaagar Singh Badali, Zila President and Constituency In-charge Akali Dal Kharar, Bibi Amanjot Kaur Ramuwalia, Chairperson District Planning Board, SAS Nagar and Bibi Paramjit Kaur Badali, Chairperson Zila Parishad, SAS Nagar, Er. R.L. Kauldhar, Chief Engineer (Central-cum-Coordination) DWSS, Er. A.K. Soni (South)-cum-Programme Director, DWSS, Er. D.S. Cheema, Chief Engineer (North), DWSS, Er. S.R. Aggarwal, Chief Technical Coordinator and Er. Veenakshi Sharma, CCDU, DWSS were present.