Himachal Government to formulating rainwater harvesting plan

By: HP News Network

Himachal Government would be considering formulating a master plan so as to create necessary rainwater harvesting infrastructure all over the state in lieu of depleting ground water resources.

He said that with the receding ground water level, it was high time to create alternate infrastructure to cater to the recharging need of various water bodies, thus, rainwater harvesting would be made mandatory in all the official buildings and while stress would be laid on watershed projects in large number including the water conservation schemes into it.

He stated that the state had targeted year 2010 to achieve 100 percent sensitization of the rural population of good sanitary behavior and would be launching the total sanitation programme more vigorously in all gram panchayats to make Himachal Pradesh Open Defecation Free (ODF) and has constituted Nirmal Gram Puraskar Yojna to reward the completely ODF gram panchayats while the Maharishi Valmiki Sampooran Swachhata Puraskar had also been introduced to motivate the people besides associating the mahila mandals with the campaign which too would be rewarded cash prizes at state, division, district and block levels.

He also said that a number of schemes were available for the benefit of the women, weaker sections of the society, IRDP, BPL and other deserving categories of society which included Matri Shakti Bima Yojna, providing insurance cover to the rural women, National Family Benefit Scheme, National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Self Employment Scheme, Atal Awas Yojna, etc. and should be availed by people. He asked the concerned departments to speed up job guarantee card preparation process under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.