Shimla : School children in at least 3000 primary schools of Himachal Pradesh will drink filtered water by the end of this year.
This was announced by the Ravinder Singh Ravi, the state’s irrigation and public health(IPH) minister here Thursday.He said under ‘jalmani’ scheme these selected schools will be provided Terafil filters.
He said 1650 panchayats had already been provided with field test kits(FTK) for checking the water quality.The remaing panchayats will be provided with FTKs by the end of this year.
The state government has provided Rs 400,000 for every lab to district water & sanitation committees for the upgradation of existing 17 water quality labs in the state.
Money has also been provided for setting up of 12 sub-divisional labs in the state.Over 20 crore has been provided by the Central government as a grant under the national rural drinking water supply programme(NRDWP) of which Rs 4.7 crore was spent in the last fiscal year.
Ravi claimed there were 53,205 habitations in the state, out of these 41,418 have already been provided drinking water facilities till April 2011.
In a 20 year career published widely. He has worked for the BBC, AFP, The Statesman, IANS and the Business Standard . Known for his hard hitting writing and occasional off-beat stories. He lives in Shimla.
