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Jal Jeevan Mission: K’taka exceeds August target in giving tap water connections
Chief minister Basavaraj Bommai, who has tested positive for Covid-19, held a virtual meeting from his residence with the rural development and panchayat raj (RDPR) department to review the progress.
The Karnataka government on Wednesday said it has exceeded its target by providing over 2.181 million tap water connections in the state under the Jal Jeevan Mission as against its initial plan to get 2.163 million connections before August 8.
Chief minister Basavaraj Bommai, who has tested positive for Covid-19, held a virtual meeting from his residence with the rural development and panchayat raj (RDPR) department to review the progress.
“By August 8, a total of 2163,817 households in the state had been targeted for piped connection. But 2181,557 houses have been connected. This is an achievement exceeding the set target,” a statement issued by the chief minister’s office (CMO) quoted Bommai as saying.
The statement added that the remaining works in batch 1 should be completed by September 15 and all sites should be visited for frequent reviews and progress.
Karnataka has been one of the leading states in implementation of several union government schemes, including the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), HT reported in March.
Karnataka, considered one of the most industrious states in the country, has seen the number of person days created, on account of higher demand, has doubled from 8.58 crore in 2017-18 to 16.28 crore in 2021-22, indicating that a larger number of the population have been able to earn an income.
Some of the reasons for the rise in demand for MNREGA jobs were rising urban distress, plummeting wages for agricultural labourers and reverse migration of sorts from cities back to villages and small towns, exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic-induced lockdowns among other factors.
The number of people who have sought refuge in MNREGA too has nearly doubled in the last five years, data showed.
From 3.891 million persons taking up MNREGA jobs in 2017-18, the number has ballooned to 6.392 million in 2021-22, data showed.
The Jal Jeevan Mission is one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet projects and the state has been given a target of providing tap connections to 10 million homes by 2024.
LK Ateeq, additional chief secretary of RDPR, on Wednesday said the department will hold trainings sessions to take the scheme under ODF Plus (open defecation free) in which all levels of administration will be tasked with frequent review of sanitation, toilets, tap-water, waste segregation and water logging to keep rural parts of the state clean under the “Swachh Bharat” programme.
