12 hours ago
Last of 7.5k BPL households relying on local water bodies provided tap connections
Panaji:
The state drinking water department (DWD) recently identified 7,458 households in Goa, in remote areas like Netravali, which had access to drinking water, but not purified water.
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These last households have now been provided with tap connections, so they have access to a treated water supply.
Most of these families were below poverty line (BPL) households, in remote or highland areas, and had access to water from wells, springs or water bodies. They were oblivious to the harm untreated water can pose and were satisfied with their existing arrangement, said DWD superintending engineer Nivrutti Parsekar.
As they did not seek tap connections, the households remained out of the radar.
'Goa was the first to achieve 'Har Ghar Jal', but now it is the first state with 100% functional house tap connections, which is 'Har Ghar Nal Se Jal', under the Jal Jeevan Mission. We learnt that there are still some households without tap connections, never seeking it. We put meter readers on the job to point out these houses to us. The meter readers know as they go from house to house.
We also asked the panchayats to identify such households,' said Parsekar.
He said that engineers then visited these houses without connections and interacted with the residents to know their perspective on not seeking tap connections. 'In areas like Netravali, which are highland areas, they used water coming from springs. In other places, water was pumped from wells. In some cases, they were still walking a distance to draw water from local water bodies or wells.
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They were satisfied with this and did not know that it can be harmful to consume water which is not treated and purified,' said the superintending engineer.
He said it took some convincing to make these BPL families understand the benefits of consuming treated water. 'We have then provided them with tap connections. Such families were left out due to oversight, being in remote areas, etc. We have managed to cover these unreached households within a span of one year,' said Parsekar, who was honoured under the Centre's Jal Jeevan Mission for making Goa the first state in the country to achieve 100% functional house tap connections.
