I test our community's well water using a kit from the Goa Public Works Department, ensuring safe drinking water for everyone.
Panaji: The state public works department (PWD) has notified a new policy for operation and maintenance of drinking water supply, aimed at achieving smooth and equitable distribution to all having metered connections “with regularity, potability, quality and quantity with involvement of community”. As part of the policy, the PWD has said that it will involve community members for water quality testing using field test kits.
“Community will be involved in testing of water quality through field test kits provided by the department regularly as per instructions issued by the PWD to confirm that the water supplied by the department is potable, conforms to the relevant standards and is within permissible limits,” states the policy.
The notification states that the policy’s objective is to ensure supply of 100LPCD (litres per capita, per day) in rural areas and 150LPCD in urban areas with equitable distribution.
Under the policy, the PWD will, in coordination with the village panchayat/municipality concerned, devise an information education communication (IEC), human resources development (HRD) and capacity building plan for taking up such activities for community involvement for water quality testing using field test kits on a regular basis, states the notification.
“Each municipal area, village panchayat area and Corporation of City of Panaji (CCP) area will have a dedicated operations and maintenance team to attend to day to day leakages, breakdown and emergent works as per the need and requirement. The details of the dedicated team shall be given to the municipality/village panchayat/CCP for their information by the PWD,” the notification states.
The policy also states that in order to ensure equitable distribution to all areas, only common metered water supply connection(s) will be released to the sump of multi-dwelling buildings. The developers of all such buildings/houses are required to have storage capacity of a minimum of three days to ensure continuous water supply to the residents, the policy reads.
The notification states that the local body concerned will coordinate with the department to recover any water supply dues.
“Households/communities will ensure the water tankers hired by them for drinking water are /registered with the PWD,” states the policy.
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