"Soon, online water quality testing meters will be installed at all the inlet points of canals and rivers from where water is being extracted for drinking purpose". It was disclosed by Mrs. Razia Sultana, Water Supply and Sanitation Minister while presiding a high level meeting of the Water Supply and Sanitation Department here today. The purpose of this whole exercise is to ensure that water is being treated properly and all dangerous toxic heavy metals are removed from the water supplied for drinking purpose.Disclosing this in a press communiqué Mrs. Razia Sultana said that "it is our statutory and moral responsibility to provide safe drinking water to the citizen of Punjab". She said that the Punjab government is very much concerned about the reported cases of contamination of various water bodies in Punjab. She said that the land of five rivers is in the news for bad reasons, water level is fast depleting besides the water bodies are being contaminated. She said that Congress Government under the vibrant leadership of Chief Minister, Captain Amarinder Singh is fully aware of its statutory duty and we have in principle decided to install meters at different river/ canal outlets from where the water is extracting to drinking purposes.
The Minister directed the Principle Secretary Mrs. Jaspreet Talwar to expedite the process of mapping of all the canals and rivers and all the inlet points from where water is taken out for drinking purpose. She said that once we have the mapping done, we will be able to know how many meters are to be installed and at what location.Mrs. Jaspreet Talwar, Principal Secretary apprised the Minister that two ‘Water Testing Laboratories’ at SAS Nagar and Patiala have also been accredited by National Board of Accreditation of Labs (NABL) and soon one more advanced laboratory equipped with facilities for analyzing heavy metals & other containments will be established at Amritsar. The Minister further added that to streamline and to make the process of water testing easy, three more laboratories are being upgraded. She said that with this we will have six state-of-the-art, hi-tech upgraded laboratories in Punjab to conduct the sampling of water.Mrs. Razia Sultana further said that that the department is in the process of filling 210 posts of junior engineers she said that the mandate to fill this post has been given to Thapar University and the advertisement for the same will appear within a week. The whole process of recruitment will be completed within three months.Prominent amongst other who were present in the meeting included Mr. Ashwani Kumar, Special Secretary cum HoD, Mohammad Isfaq, Additional Secretary, Mr. Rajinder Singh, Chief Engineer (Central), Mr. Gurpreet Singh, Chief Engineer (South), Mr. S.K. Jain, Chief Engineer (North), Mrs. Veenakshi Sharma, SE Water Quality.