Bhubaneswar, April 20: For Kalyani Baliyarsing, a resident of GGP Colony, gone are the days when she would have to make a beeline before standposts or tube wells to get water.

The 38-year-old home-maker now eagerly waits for water supply to her apartment as chief minister Naveen Patnaik today inaugurated 36 water supply schemes to provide access to quality drinking water to nearly 1.12 lakh people across of the city.

"The daily water supply to my apartment is limited. I hope the extension of the system to our area would increase the duration of water supply to my apartment. The problem of water aggravated due to the summer and the move of the government came at a very crucial time," said Baliyarsingh.

The public health engineering organisation supplies water to the area twice a day for two hours each in the morning and evening hours. She said that in summer, the duration of water supply was even cut short. Also, the water consumption by other families in her apartment gets increased resulting in shortage.

Putting an apparent end to such problems, the chief minister inaugurated a slew of drinking water projects and said: "Our government is working towards providing 135 litres per person per day and to provide piped water supply connection to all the urban households, including the slum areas. Keeping this in view, efforts need to be taken for augmentation of water resources covering uncovered areas, improvement of transmission and distribution system and replacement of age-old pipe networks."

The new projects, including extension of water supply to the uncovered areas, improvement of supply, replacement of old pipes and augmentation of sources, were inaugurated by the chief minister at the state secretariat. The event was followed by the three city MLAs - Priyadarshi Mishra, Ashok Chandra Panda and Bijay Mohanty - launching the programmes at the ground level. The projects came up at a cost of Rs 18.76 crore.

Residents would be benefited at Ashok Nagar, where the administration will improve water supply by laying pipeline from AG Square to Bapuji Nagar. In Old Town, the water supply would be extended to Lingaraj Nagar, Sriram Nagar, Panas Bania, Kharakhia, Baidyanath, Mahatab Road, Kapileswar and Bhoi Sahi.

Other areas to get the benefits of the project are Pokhariput, Bhimatangi, Patia, Badagada, Jharpada, Satya Vihar, Ghatikia, Hansapal, Jagamara, Dumduma, Saswat Vihar, Gadakana, Jadupur, IRC Village, Kalinga Nagar, Mancheswar, Kapileswar, Chakeisiani, Nayapalli along with a few others.

"We had submitted these project reports in our annual action plan of 2015-16 to the state government, following which we got the nod and finished the work on a war footing. The project will benefit a large number of residents in a big way. The population of Old Town, Ashok Nagar, Badagada, GGP Colony and Bhimatangi will be the major beneficiary of the project," said the organisation's superintending engineer Chitta Ranjan Jena.

In February, the chief minister had also inaugurated five drinking water projects that included underground water reservoirs and extension of piped water connection. The projects worth Rs 12.61 crore have started yielding results as nearly 47,000 people of the city have now got access to a longer duration of water supply.

Previously, 33 wards had total water supply, while the remaining 34 had partial coverage. Of the nine lakh population of the city, nearly two lakh had been deprived of regular water supply. However, the recently launched reduced the number of people who are yet to be covered under the water supply project.

The project that was launched here today is part of a total 100 urban water supply schemes that will be inaugurated across the state in the next two days. The upcoming projects to be inaugurated in the coming days will cover Cuttack, Puri, Nimapara, Konark, Nayagarh, Khandapada, Berhampur, Rourkela, Rajgangpur, Kendrapara, Jajpur, Choudwar, Jagatsinghpur, Vyasanagar, Binika, Titilagarh, Nabarangpur, Umerkote, Kotpada and a few others places.

According to the organisation, the city's population stands at nearly 9.5 lakh, for which requirement of drinking water is 120.62 Million Litres per Day (MLD) while the supply is around 295.30MLD.