Committee Reports: Water Resources 2020-2021

Director-in-charge: Rtn. Pratap Padode

Chair: Rtn. Abhishek Saraf

Co-Chair: Rtn. Siddharth Bhimrajka

Members: DGN Sandip Agarwalla, PP Vijay Jatia, Rtn. Peter Born, Rtn. Suresh Goklaney, Rtn. Abhin Alimchandani, Rtn. Homi Katgara, Rtn. Anand Parikh, Rtn. Vineet Suchanti, Rtn. Abhinav Aggarwal, Rtn. Akhil Sanghi, Rtn. Abhishek Sharman, Rtn. Gautam Doshi, Rtn. Siddhant Jatia, Rtn. Vikas Jain, Rtn. Vivek Gupta, Rtn. Rishi Dalal, Rtn. Vivek Kothari, Rtn. Gautam Agarwal, Rtn. Riddhi Jhaveri.

Safe drinking water plants in the villages of Maharashtra
Villages not more than three hours away from Mumbai do not have basic safe drinking water even today, in 2021. The residents had been resorting to boiling river or well water, throwing chemical powder by hand in the water and drinking it thereafter and/ or directly drinking from the well. This led to increased incidence of water-borne diseases, further leading to health and income difficulties. They also paid exorbitantly for potable drinking water before these SFDP got fixed in their villages, leading to gain in family income as their daily cost of drinking water came down and incidence of water-borne diseases came down.

We have set up to provide 27 safe drinking water plants (SFDP) in the villages of Maharashtra under a Global Grant, providing state of the art equipment, training to Self Help Groups (SHGs) to run these centres, provide advocacy and our community upliftment initiatives reach out to more than 54,000 beneficiaries across these centres. More than 23 of these villages are already done with grateful beneficiaries using these on a day-to-day basis leading to a rise in income, health and village prosperity.

Handwash stations
Palghar is the youngest district of Maharashtra state. Nearly 38 per cent of the population are Scheduled Tribe communities, with the lowest human development index. There are 2,204 government rural schools operational in the district reaching out to nearly 0.7 million children from the age group of 6-18 years. Practices related to personal hygiene, storage and handling of drinking water and menstrual hygiene management are limited among the teachers and students.

The Rotary Club of Bombay, under project “DHaAL”, is installing specially designed “Group Hand Washing Stations” (GHWS) in 752 schools. In-depth training will be provided to School Management Committees (SMCs) and Children’s Councils, Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) training of female teachers and adolescent girls. Emphasis is being given on Behavior Change Communication (BCC) with school children.

With the success of Project “DHaAL” Palghar will be the first district in India with all the rural government schools having group hand washing facility, WASH and other personal hygiene practices inculcated in the children and all the adolescent girls having learned the vital facts about MHM.

Drinking water systems in Palghar
With the success of project “DHaAL” and based on need assessment RCB has initiated a new project “JAL JEEVAN – 146” for installation of safe drinking water purification systems in 146 schools. Eureka Forbes Limited are the equipment partner and are also contributing via CSR. The objective of the project will be to bring safe drinking water to the students and staff and educate the benefits of clean water thereby improving the health and attendance of the staff and students. Sufficient funding has been organised to ensure comprehensive annual maintenance for 2nd & 3rd year to ensure long term use.