Jajpur: The district administration has decided to install reverse osmosis system in schools, especially in the rural areas.
Reverse osmosis refers to a water purification technology that uses a semi-permeable membrane to remove ions, molecules and larger particles from drinking water, in the process, making it safe for drinking.
The District Red Cross Fund will provide money for the purpose. The decision was taken at the executive body meeting of the District Red Cross held in the residential office of the district collector on Wednesday.
"The availability of safe potable drinking water is a major problem in the majority of schools across the Jajpur district. To provide safe and clean drinking water to school students, we will install water purifiers in some schools this year," said Jajpur collector Ranjan Kumar Das, who is also the District Red Cross chairman.
The school management will maintain the reverse osmosis plant at their respective educational institutions, he said.
The district project co-ordination has been asked to identify the schools, where the access of the safe drinking water is a major problem for the students.
"A water purifier vendor has been asked to conduct tests on the contamination level in the water for each of the identified schools. The test aims to know the exact flouride content in the water before the installation of the purifiers," he said. The right solutions were then designed after taking into consideration factors such as availability of electricity in the identified schools and the flowing water source on the school premise.
"To enable more number of children to access the drinking water, we have provided each purifier with a storage tank with enough capacity to cater to the strength of that particular school," the collector said.
The district administration will install the water purifiers at least in 30 schools across the district. The project would help to provide safe drinking water to over 1,000 children. More schools are planned to be installed with the project in phased manner.
