The Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur has developed a community supported supply of purified drinking water project at Porapara in West Midnapore district of West Bengal. Dr Somnath Ghosal of the Rural Development Centre of IIT Kharagpur has installed a fully-automated multi-filtered UV treated drinking water facility which can provide close to 1000 litres of purified drinking water to 60 families everyday at Rs. one per family, an IIT KGP statement said Monday.
While the land was freely provided by a villager, IIT KGP build the infrastructure and funded the entire project. The villagers are getting purified drinking water through water ATM vending machines using water cards from the facility launched about ten days ago, it said.
Ghosal said such self-managed purification units require little intervention in maintenance and require one-time investments that can become part of the CSR initiatives of both public and private enterprises.
The entire operation of the unit, its upkeep and daily management, are being done by the villagers who have formed three committees to manage the operations.
It is an "install and self-operate" arrangement in which the current and future financial needs are to be met by the villagers from the fund collected in the form of the daily payment for water, the statement said. Ghosal recently filed for a patent for the technology used in Porapara, the statement said.
