Excelsior Correspondent
ANANTNAG, May 16: Minister for PHE, Irrigation & Flood Control, Sham Lal Sharma has called for launching an effective movement for conservation and preservation of water resources in view of the growing needs and depleting sources.
“The days are not far away when there will be a war for this essential and basic commodity of life”, the Minister said, adding “we shall have to make collective effort to conserve the water resources and make its judicious use besides taping optimum ground water reserves for our day to day use”.
The Minister said this while reviewing the progress of various on-going Water Supply Schemes (WSS) and irrigation projects in district Anantnag at a meeting of engineers held here today under his chairmanship.
Local legislators including, Abdul Rehman Veeri, Rafi Ahmed Mir, Peer Mansoor Hussain, Dr. Bashir Ahmed Veeri, Abdul Majid Bhat, District Development Commissioner, Anantnag,. Farooq Lone, Chief Engineer, PHE, M.A. Lanker, Chief Engineer, Irrigation & Flood Control, Javed Jaffar, Superintending Engineers, Executive Engineers and other officers of the department were present in the meeting.
Expressing satisfaction on the overall drinking water scenario and on-going schemes in the district, the Minister stressed the need for adopting a well-knit strategy to meet the ever growing needs of drinking water in view of the growing number of new colonies. He directed the engineers to formulate a comprehensive programme to cover all new habitations with safe drinking water and issued specific instructions to the concerned to ensure sustainable water source before taking up any new schemes along with all components to make the schemes operational with inbuilt provision of man power. To deal with the land acquisition cases for new schemes, the Government will take a permanent decision shortly, said Mr. Sham.
Reiterating the firm commitment of the Government to address the issues of daily rater employees/contractuals on priority, the Minister said that the matter is under the active consideration and information about the exact number of such employees is being gathered on a specific devised format from all divisions across the State. After the completion of this exhaustive exercise the Government will take an appropriate decision for their absorption or declaring them permanent daily wagers.
The legislators highlighted the demands of their areas pertaining to augmentation of drinking water scenario and expeditious completion of on-going water supply schemes.
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