DPHE’s water supply projects delayed until Jun

The Department of Public Health Engineering has been given until June to complete five safe water supply and sanitation projects initially scheduled to be finished by June 2021.

The projects are — ‘Water Supply in 37 Districts’, ‘Water Supply and Environment Sanitation to 40 municipalities and Growth Centres Project (2nd Revision)’, ‘National Sanitation Project (3rd Phase) (2nd Revision)’, ‘Safe Water Supply and Sanitation for the Workers of Tea Garden’ and ‘Environmental Sanitation and Safe Water Supply to Municipalities at Growth Centres of Upazila Level’.

Their deadline was June 2021. The Department of Public Health Engineering is implementing the projects. It sought another year to complete them and got the Planning Division’s approval on February 17.

“We need a year to complete the projects by June this year. They have been excluded from the Annual Development Programme for 2021-22 fiscal year,” a senior Planning Commission official told The Business Post.

Planning Division Secretary Pradip Ranjan Chakraborty said that these projects were not completed on schedule due to various reasons. He said many projects of other ministries and divisions too had missed deadlines. “We have agreed to increase time or cost under special consideration,” he added.

The ‘Water Supply in 37 Districts’ project was launched in December 2010; the ‘Water Supply and Environment Sanitation to 40 municipalities and Growth Centres Project (2nd Revision)’ in January 2014; the ‘National Sanitation Project (3rd Phase) (2nd Revision)’ project in January 2016; the ‘Safe Water Supply and Sanitation for the Workers of Tea Garden’ project in July 2018; and ‘Environmental Sanitation and Safe Water Supply to Municipalities at Growth Centres of Upazila Level’ project in July 2012.