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Fillip to campaign

PHOTO: T. Singaravelou

All attention: School students going through the pamphlets on methods to make drinking water safe. —

PUDUCHERRY: The campaign to provide safe drinking water to residents of the Union Territory will get a fillip with the government embarking on a massive awareness programme under the Rajiv Gandhi National Water Quality Monitoring and Surveillance Programme.

It was launched at Thavalakuppam on Wednesday with a programme for government school students and functionaries of civic bodies.

Executive Engineer N. Suresh Nathan, Public Health, (PWD), said the campaign would be conducted in all the villages in the Union Territory.

As part of the programme, water testing kits would be distributed to all schools and village panchayats, he said adding that the results would be analysed every month and corrective steps taken.

The school authorities and staff of the village panchayats would be trained to test about 12 parameters such as level of iron, chlorine, total dissolved solids, odour and alkaline content in the drinking water, he said.

Chief Engineer of PWD C. Anandane said a system was already in place to collect 700 water samples every month for testing.

A few pockets in Puducherry region that fell in Koodapakkam, Agaram, Ulavaikal and Senthanatham in Ossudu constituency have shown high level of iron content. Iron content in drinking water in these places has shot up to 3.5 per cent, when the permissible limit was 0.1 per cent, he said. Steps have been taken to rectify the problem. High level of iron content was also reported in certain places in Thengathittu and Velrampet, he said.

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