SHILLONG, Feb 20: VPP MLA and North Shillong legislator, Adelbert Nongrum on Tuesday shed light on the not-so-shiny side of the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), pointing out glaring gaps in the JJM dashboard which highlights glorious figures on the large number of tap connections provided in the state, but is silent on the actual water supply to such households.
Nongrum questioned the authenticity of the data which boasts of a completion rate of 74.65 per cent across the state.
The JJM, a central government initiative, had a target to provide functional household tap connection (FHTC) to every rural household by 2024. Meghalaya, which had a minuscule 0.7 per cent tap water connections in 2019 when the JJM was launched, now has increased it to around 74.6 per cent.
Nongrum, who recently visited two villages which have been covered under JJM, informed the House that the ground reality was different since the tap connections did not provide any water.
Raising a short-duration discussion in the Assembly, Nongrum cited examples of Thynroit village in Mawkynrew and Mawpat where the tap connections provided under JJM were reduced to mere decorative pieces without any actual supply of water.
In Thynroit village, GI pipes lined the streets, but they are perennially dry forcing residents to shell out Rs 300 for jeep tankers which provide 1,200 litres of water.
Nongrum went on to say that he looked up the JJM dashboard and read the data which showed figures under “households with tap connections” in Thynroit village at 1,024 but there was no data for “households with tap water supply”.
Similar was the case in Mawpat which has 1,922 households, out of which 53.28 per cent are recorded as having “tap connections” but there is no data on “households with tap water supply”, he stated.
In reply, PHE Minister Marcuise N Marak blamed it on “computer illiteracy” and other “technical difficulties”, but maintained that the percentage of error was around 1 per cent or less.
