Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma on Saturday visited Sohiong in East Khasi Hills District, to inspect the ongoing works of the PHE department under the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM).
Accompanied by the local MLA and PHE minister Samlin Malgniang, the Chief Minister along with a team of officials from the department, embarked on household visits to assess the implementation of JJM in the area.
During his visit, the Chief Minister interacted with the beneficiaries personally. Piped water connection has ushered in much-anticipated convenience to most of these rural residents that depend on drawing water manually from distantly located water sources in the villages.
Expressing his overall satisfaction on the progress of work the Chief Minister was optimistic that with the ongoing pace the State should be able to achieve the targets set forth and provide functional tap water connections to all rural households in Meghalaya by 2022.
“I would like to thank Prime Minister and the Ministry of Jal Shakti for all the financial and technical support in the implementation of this programme in our state,” the CM said.
“We have a target of almost 2 lakh households in this financial year,” he added.
“The PHE department under the leadership of our current Minister is doing a tremendous job to pursue the completion of all works mandated under the programme and move forward aggressively even under such difficult circumstances (Covid-19 pandemic) that we are facing currently,” he further added.
Jal Jeevan Mission is a project funded by the Ministry of Jal Shakti, which envisages providing safe and adequate drinking water through individual household tap connections by 2024 to all households in rural India.
The programme will also implement source sustainability measures as mandatory elements, such as recharge and reuse through greywater management, water conservation, rainwater harvesting.
Meghalaya has set the target of December 2022 for Functional Household Tap Connections (FHTC) to every rural household in the State.
Later in the day the Chief Minister also visited the site of the Greater Shillong Water Supply Scheme at Mawphlang and interacted with the officials from the concerned department.