Reverse Osmosis (RO) plants have been installed in several villages in order to provide good drinking water to the citizens of the state’s hamlets.
The project, jointly organised by Tata Nano and Water and Sanitation Management Organisation (WASMO), includes setting up RO plants in 20 villages, for a start.
A Nano official said: “Water is available in villages near Sanand but it contains high amount of total dietary fibre (TDF), which is harmful for health. We want to provide pure drinkable water to the villagers and so we have installed RO plants free of cost in the villages where we found high TDF content.”
With a capacity of 500 litres per hour, the water purified by RO plants is sufficient for a village where each household would get 20 litres of water per day for drinking purposes. This initiative has helped ameliorate the drinking problems of thousands of villagers, for neither can they afford RO plants in their homes nor buy the water.
“We have already installed RO plants in eight villages and will add four more soon. The RO plants have been installed by Indian Ion Exchange Company. We will complete the project in phases. By this December, we will cover three more villages,” said Vandana Pandya, manager, WASMO.
Regarding the negligible amount charged from the villagers, Agarwal said, “It is just the maintenance cost, which the villagers are paying for using the plant and the pure water. A mere amount of 10 paise per litre is charged, which is practically nothing. In short, for 20 litres of water per household, only Rs 2 will be charged, which will go towards the maintenance of the plant. Apart from that, we have asked villages to provide for the room where the RO plant will be running.”
The villagers are happy and satisfied with the project. Stated Govindbhai Goyal of Jhaap village, “Around 100 bottles of water are drawn from the plant by the villagers. They didn’t charge us any money for the first month. Now they ask us to pay a negligible sum.”
