Punjab Water Supply and Sanitation Minister Razia Sultana today under took the review of projects of Department of Water Supply and Sanitation and directed the officers to complete all the ongoing projects on time for ensuring supply of clean and potable drinking water to the residents of villages.Presiding over a review meeting with top officials of Water Supply and Sanitation Department at Mahatma Gandhi State Institute of Public Administration, she also issued instructions to the officials to ensure the quality of water being supplied to residents. The Minister said that clean drinking water is connected with the health of people, so quality of water should be very high. She instructed the officials to coordinate with the Union Government, companies and funding agencies especially the World Bank and NABARD for the timely completion of all the ongoing projects across Punjab.The Minister said that this is the first review meeting of the year 2021 and she would now hold regular meetings with the officials every month to know the progress of all the projects.
The officials informed the Minister that the project reports of surface water based projects in Ferozepur,Fazilka and Abohar areas are prepared soon. The Ferozepur (12 MLD) project would benefit 93 villages in the area, the Fazilka project (34 MLD) would benefit 205 villages and the Abohar (63 MLD) project would benefit 115 villages. Earlier the Minister for Water Supply and Sanitation was briefed in detail about ongoing 11 canal water based projects in Moga, Patiala, Fatehgarh Sahib, Amritsar, Tarn Taran and Gurdaspur districts. After the completion of these projects, the villages in these districts which have problems with uranium, fluoride and arsenic will get clean water. The Minister was also apprised about the ongoing projects under JalJeevan Mission and status of progress in terms of physical completion and financial progress.Prominent amongst others who were present in the meeting included Principal Secretary Water Supply and Sanitation Jaspreet Talwar; Additional Secretary and Head of the Department Amit Talwar; Additional Secretary Parneet Shergill, Chief Engineers of North, South and Central Region and Superintending Engineers.