On the occasion of National Panchayat Raj Day 2022, the residents of Palli village in Samba district have expressed gratitude to Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, for materializing their dream of piped water through Jal Jeevan Mission.
Nestled in the wheat fields on right side of Jammu and Punjab national highway, the mood in the village looked festive as the Man of the Moment, Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, was in their locality to address PRI representatives of the country. He had launched this ambitious scheme which provided the Palli residents with clean piped drinking water.
Under this ambitious project of Jal Jeevan Mission, Palli village of Samba has been fully saturated with 448 FHTCs at a cost of Rs. 143.40 lakh. The Palli village water supply project also included a tube well of 6000 Gallons of discharge capacity per hour.
“We have also constructed the sump tank as part of the scheme which is 30,000 gallons of capacity. The water will be stored in a 30,000-gallon capacity sump tank which will suffice the water requirement of Palli village,” a senior engineer of J&K Jal Shakti Department said.
Randhir Sharma, Sarpanch of Palli Panchayat expressed gratitude to PM Narendra Modi for providing piped water connection to every household in his village which was definitely a daunting task.
“We are very happy that we got running water taps for the first time after independence. Earlier, it was a hard task to get water from hand pumps which were a source of various water-borne diseases,” Sharma said.
“We were also trained to check water quality on our own. This is the best gift we could get from PM Modi.” he added.
A school teacher and Pani Samiti member of Palli village, Sunaina hailed the Government’s initiative to save women from drudgery, particularly school going girls who had to fetch water from long distances.
“Palli village has witnessed massive development after the inception of Jal Jeevan Mission in 2019. Girls can now invest the time, which they used to spend in fetching water from distant areas, in studies for brighter careers,” she said.
A sixteen year old Nandini Sharma of Palli village says she has stopped bringing bottled water from home after her school was provided pure drinking water supply under Jal Jeevan Mission.
Pertinently, on 15th August 2019, Prime Minister launched the Jal Jeevan scheme to bring piped water to all households in the coming years. In his Independence Day address, PM Modi had said half of the country’s households do not have access to piped water. To ensure that every household gets clean piped water in rural areas, Prime Minister set the target of covering all households by 2024 despite certain challenges. However, Jammu and Kashmir set the target of completion of tap water connections to all households by the year 2022.
According to official figures, 4,86000 households have been provided with functional tap water connections since the launch of the scheme- on 15 August 2019.
To ensure potable drinking water supply, J&K Jal Shakti Department has opened 97 water quality testing laboratories across the UT for the general public to test water samples at a nominal rate.
Jal Jeevan Mission has already achieved the target of providing tap water to all 22,422 schools and 23,926 Anganwadi centres ahead of time.