NEW DELHI: Within a few weeks of its launch, more than 800 Sewage Treatment Plants (STP) from different states and UTs have been enrolled for assessment under Centre’s ambitious ‘Jal Hi Amrit’ scheme.
The programme launched by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs is an incentive scheme to encourage states and UT authorities to ensure good quality of recycled water being treated at plants.
So far, around 2,500 participants have been trained through on-site and online training programmes. The ministry also held two training sessions for assessors and samplers.
Under the initiative, participating STPs will be evaluated based on the desktop assessment, field verification, and water quality testing. After the evaluation, a star-rating certificate with six months validity according to the final assessment will be issued.
The Centre introduced this incentive scheme to encourage authorities to ensure good quality of recycled water being treated at plants. The proposed scheme — Clean Water Credit System — generate competitiveness among authorities for meeting environmental standards and for managing the used water (sewage) treatment plants efficiently. The incentive amounting to `25 lakh-eight crore — is released based on ratings and the recycling capacity of the plant.
A 70:30 incentive release structure has been formulated for this programme; 70% of the incentive is released upfront to the STPs if they meet the required conditions and remaining 30% are given upon when they maintain their star rating for another six months. The 4-star and 3-star STPs become eligible for balance incentive earmarked for higher rating following their upgradation to five or four-star rating by next year, said officials.
The STPs utilise the incentive for improvement of operating efficiencies, technology upgradation, capital expenditures for reuse infrastructure, setting up of real time data management systems and capacity building of staff.
Minister Tokhan Sahu recently informed Parliament that for desktop assessment, field verification and capacity building of urban local bodies, specialised agencies have been onboarded.