The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : 21,500 villages do not have potable water: Minister

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Thursday, Jun 19, 2008
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

21,500 villages do not have potable water: Minister

Special Correspondent

Government plans to tap villages’ own water resources
Schemes to rejuvenate water bodies soon

BANGALORE: There are 21,500 villages in the State which do not have a safe drinking water supply system, according to Minister for Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Shobha Karandlaje. Added to this, there are some villages in Raichur district where drinking water is contaminated with arsenic and other heavy metals.

Ms. Karandlaje told presspersons that the Government would make a “conscious and viable effort” towards providing safe drinking water to every village by tapping the villages’ own water resources.

She said many of the villages where borewells have reached abysmal depths, fluoride and iron contamination had become common. The Government was considering water treatment plants at places with water contamination. These plants should be able to deliver clean potable water to the villages. In the next three years, the government was planning to include 15,000 villages in State for “clean potable water” programme and in the next one year 6000 villages would be added.

In a move to improve the water table levels in the villages, Ms. Karandlaje said, the Government would take up programmes to rejuvenate the water bodies in all villages. Tanks, ponds, dug wells and various other smaller water bodies would be reconditioned.

This will be done under the Rural Employment Guarantee Programme.

Ms. Karandlaje said the Government would re-work on the social forestry system. In the past, wrong species were planted under the social forestry programmes

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