CAG CHIDES HEALTH DEPARTMENT OVER IRREGULARITIES IN HARYANA'S WATER SUPPLY

While both rural and urban water supplies in Haryana are funded through various central and state government-sponsored schemes, rural water supply in the state is under the jurisdiction of the Public Health Engineering Department, which caters to the water supply requirement of 1.65 crore rural population (as per 2011 census).

- RAVINDER MALIK

 

A CAG report on Wednesday revealed that the department has “entirely failed” to meet expectations on several fronts and pointed out that the report mentions several irregularities. It was found that there has been a shortage in the stipulated supply of water in rural and urban areas along with poor water quality, which is a matter of “serious concern”. Further, the CAG report stated that the department failed to collect the tariffs on the water in both rural as well as urban areas. It is worth noting that the monthly tariff of water charges in Haryana has been set at Rs 40 for general category beneficiaries and Rs 20 per month for Scheduled Caste (SC) category beneficiaries in villages that do not fall under any municipal area.