Assam Halts Jal Jeevan Mission Projects Amid Quality Concerns

Assam has announced a temporary freeze on all Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) projects due to quality control issues and project delays, said the state government on Monday.

Besides, an audit of projects has been ordered.

JJM aims to provide safe drinking water through piped connections to every village and household.

“While it (JJM) has changed the rural drinking water landscape in short time, there are also a small percentage of challenges in terms of project delays and quality issues given the capacity of contractors in some parts of the State. And this the State Government wanted to correct upfront so that every household gets the potable tap water,” read a release from the state government.

The development comes a day after Congress, the main opposition party in Assam, demanded CBI probe into allegations regarding corrupt practices in project allocations, prompted by a leaked internal government letter.

In the letter it noted that “some contractors failed to meet deadlines”.

The letter directed temporary cessation of ongoing construction activities until further instructions are provided after the audit.

“Five years back, Assam had among the highest targets to be covered to reach 100% coverage of the beneficiaries. The State has never ever implemented a program of such unprecedented scale, scope and ambition and the effort to cover nearly 70 Lakh rural households, across all the 25000 plus villages of the State, through over 8000 contractors by spending Rs. 19,550 crores so far – and all this in less than five years and it has been nothing short of a herculean task,” said the state underlining the challenge of the project.

By 2024, the mission is to improve public health and bridge the gap between rural and urban areas by providing Functional family Tap Connections (FHTCs) to every rural family.

As of October 6, the Jal Shakti Ministry said the mission has provided tap water connections to 15.19 crore rural households, ensuring 78.58 per cent of rural homes now have access to potable water, a sharp increase from the 17 per cent coverage when the programme began, reported NDTV.

Just 1.6% of Assam rural residents had access to Functional Household Tap Connections (FHTCs) at the time of JJM’s launch on August 15, 2019, with 1.1 lakh connections. This was significantly less than the then-current national average of 17% and the lowest of all the states.

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