Jal Jeevan Mission: Govt to Train Women to Test Water Quality

Recently, Jal Shakti minister Gajendra Shekhawat addressed the Hindustan Times Environment Conclave. During the conclave, the minister announced that the government will train women to test the quality of water under the Jal Jeevan mission.

Key Points

• According to the minister, the Union government will provide training to five women from every village for testing the quality of water at nominal charges as part of Jal Jeevan mission.
• The government is aimed to make water-quality testing infrastructure accessible to every village to achieve the target under the Jal Jeevan Mission to provide safe drinking water to all by 2024.
• Piped drinking water to villages (rural households) is an important component for reaching the target of universal access to safe drinking water in a country.
• As per the NGO WaterAid, 163 million people in the country did not have access to clean water in the year 2015.
• To achieve the aim of safe piped water to all by 2024, a key benchmark is that piped water supply at 55 LPCD should be available in household premises or at a distance of not more than 100 metres from the house.
• Now, the conditions have improved during the pandemic. In the starting, only 17% of households had access to piped drinking water which has now been increased to 3.30 crore households during the pandemic and lockdown.

Different programmes for water conservation

Many programmes like the Atal Bhujal mission, Jal Shakti campaign, Dam Rehabilitation Yojana, “Catch the rain where it falls”, etc. were highlighted during the conclave.

Atal Bhujal mission was launched on December 25 2019 for improving groundwater management. Jal Shakti campaign was launched in 2019 for water security and conservation.