The public health engineering department (PHED) has failed to fully utilise Rs 430 crore meant for strengthening rural drinking water supply system in the state.

This was revealed in a report by a legislative council estimate committee that said the expenditure of the total funds, given jointly by the Centre and state every year, has remained “grossly inadequate for the past four years”.

“Over 60 per cent of total funds, earmarked for the scheme, was being surrendered every year since 2008. As a result, of about 49 Centre-sponsored water supply schemes, only nine could be started, even as people have been facing severe drinking water shortage in drought- and flood-hit areas,” a committee member said.

According to the National Rural Drinking Water Programme, 18,431 villages in the state did not have pure drinking water facility till last year.

Of them, 1,112 villages were affected by high arsenic levels in drinking water, while 3,339 and 13,980 hamlets were contaminated by fluoride and iron respectively.

The central government has set a target of providing pure and safe drinking water to all villages in India by 2012 under Bharat Nirman Yojana.

The initiative has met with little success in Bihar. Till April 2009, 34,909 villages in the state were deprived of pure drinking water facilities, but the Centre was successful in solving the problem in only about 16,000 hamlets under the first phase of the scheme.

PHED officials blamed the slow pace of work on the shortage of employees and said the department is in process of preparing its work force of about 4,000 operations and maintenance workers and engineers.