Highly appreciating the state government for providing improved and sustainable rural water supply and sanitation services to the rural population in Punjab, the World Bank implementation support mission has lauded the remarkable achievement made by state in registering high rate of percentage of rural habitations achieving fully covered status besides being regarded as one of the best performing states in terms of sanitation coverage. A World Bank implementation support mission led by Mr. Srinivasa Rao Podireddy had conducted the survey from November 11-20, 2013 to review the implementation progress till date towards achievement of Project Development Objective (PDO), review of implementation arrangements and achievement of physical and financial targets besides availability of funds for smooth implementation of the activities. The Mission also reviewed the progress on action points listed in previous mission, identify any issues impinging on progress and agree on plan to address the outstanding issues. The findings of mission and its key observations were discussed by the team of World Bank with the Punjab Chief Minister Mr. Parkash Singh Badal in a specially convened meeting recently.
The Mission has hailed the state government by asserting that there were no pending issues and the state government has been advancing funds liberally to the project due to which there was no shortage of funds. The project for imparting improved and sustainable rural water supply and sanitation services to the rural population has made remarkable achievement and the fully covered status was close to 100% while at start it was 43% in March 2006. Punjab is also regarded as one of the best performing states in terms of sanitation coverage which was over 70%.
The implementation of project in the state has demonstrated some innovations for the first time in our country as Punjab might be the first state to declare 100% coverage of villages with protected water supply, with just 45 villages left against the total more than 12000 villages. The additional efforts by the state government would make Punjab absolutely a ‘Not Covered free village state’. The project has also made excellent progress after the previous mission as it has completed all procurements and got more than 20% funds disbursed after May 2013.Commending the timely release of finances by the state government, the Mission has observed that the shortage of funds was presently not an issue as since April 2013 the Financial Department has released Rs 161.96 crore to the project. Likewise SPMC Mohali has recently got another Rs 50 crore from the Finance Department on November 19 for further payments under the project.Acceding to the demand made by the Mission to extend financial support to the poor in villages for constructing septic tanks/ chambers required to connect to the sewers, the Chief Minister had agreed in principle to extend state support upto Rs 8 crore. Mr. Badal had also responded positively towards the request to consider not charging higher power charges for water supply schemes. He also showed keenness on second project/ additional financing as he saw urgent need to finance some sewerage and water supply schemes besides taking advantage of the current momentum at which the department was working.
It may be recalled the WB delegation had visited the state to review the progress of Rs.1280 crore World Bank aided Rural Water Supply & Sanitation Project during which it visited all the 116 villages covering 22 districts under the WB Water Supply & Sanitation Project.
The team task leader Mr. Srinivasa had claimed that Punjab has really proved to be a role model for other states as it was far ahead of Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh where this project was also being implemented successfully. He further said that Punjab was the only state in the country that has been able to run 23 water supply schemes to ensure 24 X 7 supply through creating high degree of awareness amongst the masses besides installation of water meters.