By our correspondent, Jamnagar, 11 February 2013

Ministers Babubhai Bokhiria and Nanubhai Vanani on Sunday reached Jamnagar district in the course of their Saurashtra wide tour on water availability and distribution issues.

Bokhiria held meetings with the district administration, Jamnagar Municipal Corporation among others.

Later he briefed, “at present out of 11 towns and 698 villages of Jamnagar district, 4 towns and 168 villages are supplied water through Narmada pipe line, while 7 towns and 88 villages are supplied water through local dam and group schemes. 416 villages are dependent on independent sources oriented schemes, while 30 villages are supplied water through tankers.”

According to Shri Bokhiria, in the time to come, Rs 1284 lakh will be spent for water tankers in 237 villages of Jamnagar district. Similarly Rs 75 lakh will be allotted for hand pumps located in 150 villages, Rs 300 lakh for power pump connected bore wells, Rs 150 lakh for 50 tanker filling bore wells, Rs 107 lakh for betterment of 205 water supply schemes, Rs 27 lakh for hand pump repairing and Rs 1634.50 lakh for urban area water supply, thus total Rs 35.30 crore will be spent.Bokhiria added that the government will provide enough money for bore well in dam areas.

Minister Bokhiria asked Jamnagar Municipal Corporation(JMC) why don’t they supply water on daily basis when the JMC is getting enough supply to do so. He asked JMC officials to plan and execute daily water supply.

The meeting was attended by ministers Nanubhai Vanani, Vasuben Trivedi, district collector Nalin Upadhyay, water resources board member secretary Mahesh Sing, Chief engineer MS Patel, DDO Ajaykumar, Additional Collector DM Modi, Deputy municipal commissioner Kumbharana among others. Water resources department engineer Modi and municipal corporation engineer Chhatrala gave power point presentation on the situation of water in district.

Khambhalia MLA Poonamben Madam in her representation told minister to give priority in allotment of power connections to those farmers whose wells have water.