By Our Correspondent
BERHAMPUR: Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who is on a two-day visit to Ganjam district, on Sunday inaugurated a desalination SWRO water distribution project to purify seawater into fresh water at the premises of IREL (India) Limited at Matikhal in Chhatrapur.
Shri Pradhan visited the water unit and tasted the water after purification. Responding to the media, he said that the initiative launched today is a project to process seawater into fresh water. Being a coastal district, Ganjam faces various water problems. Despite being close to the sea, the availability of clean drinking water has become a constant problem due to high salinity in the groundwater and limited fresh water resources. Availability of clean drinking water is a basic need. This initiative is an important milestone towards water conservation in the local area. It will provide a reliable source of clean drinking water to the people of the local area. It will meet the water requirement that has been a challenge for the local area for a long time. He thanked IRL for today’s initiative, which is working towards building a healthy society and sustainable development.
The Union Minister further said that IREL (India) Limited is an important company of the country in the strategic sector. For the last 40 to 45 years, it has been working for rare earths for the development of the country. As a commercial enterprise, recently, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) spent Rs 160 crores through its own technology and brought forward the technology to purify salt water and provide clean drinking water to the citizens. One such plant has been set up here in Indian technology.
Just as Israel is purifying salt water and putting it to use on a large scale, here too, in the first phase, drinking water will be provided to the people of Matikhal and Aryapalli areas. For this, only 11 paisa per liter of water will be spent. Our state of Odisha has a 450 km coastline. There is a problem of clean water in the coastal areas. In that direction, today, IREL is making a sincere effort to provide water to the surrounding villages under the CSR project. This is probably the first in the state to convert salt water into fresh water and provide it to the people, said Shri Pradhan.
