The chief minister on Sunday set 2010 as the deadline for bringing 98 per cent of the citizens within the civic body?s command zone of filtered surface water supply.

At present, only 75 per cent of the 80-lakh population get filtered surface water.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was speaking at the inauguration of a five-million-gallons-per-day (MGD) water treatment-cum-booster plant in Watgunge. The plant will benefit around 300,000 people in five wards ? spread across Watgunge, Munshigunge, Michael Dutta Street, Ekbalpore, Circular Garden Reach Road and Satya Doctor Road.

Designed and built by Austrian company VA TECH WABAG Ltd, this is the first water-treatment plant in the country based on the Lamella Plate Technology. The plant has come up on 10 bighas; use of conventional technology would have required at least 20 bighas to set it up.

?I cannot offer poison to citizens,? Bhattacharjee said, while stressing the need to abandon deep tubewells, water from which has been found to be contaminated with arsenic at several places. ?Deep tubewells are bad for health. The practice across the world is to replace water from deep tubewells with filtered surface water.?

The chief minister continued: ?To me, Calcutta is not just Park Street or Theatre Road, but a city where around 1.7 million people are poor. The government is bound to look after them and that explains our focus on water supply, drainage, sanitation and primary education.?

According to him, the poor are flocking to the city as the cost of living here is the lowest in the country. ?In Delhi, I think, the poor have nothing but water to fill their stomach.?

Mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya urged the people to be proactive in checking wastage of filtered water. ?It is not just water, but people?s money that flows down the drains. It needs money to treat water. If you save money, we can utilise it for your development.?

He announced that a 40-MGD plant in Palta and another treatment-cum-booster station in Jorabagan will be commissioned in January.