Bhubaneswar: The state government has made a plan outlay of Rs 2,803 crore to provide safe drinking water through new pipe water supply scheme to urban and rural people.

The state government plans to invest Rs 1,803.89 crore in urban areas under the Odisha Urban Water Supply Policy and Rs 1,000 crore to provide water to people in the rural areas.

Under the urban water supply policy, the state government plans to take up 545 new projects at a cost of Rs 588.04 crore. It has allocated Rs 160 crore to complete all the incomplete urban water supply projects.

"We will also utilise Rs 50.79 crore for improvement of service standard, monitoring quality of water and creating of testing facilities. Besides, energy-efficient measures, meeting the emergency and social requirements such as water supply to schools and anganwadi centres will also be taken up on a priority basis," said an official.

It has also been decided that universal coverage will be achieved before introducing the user-end metering system. However, the government will not insist on individual user-end metering. A decision to this effect was taken at the cabinet meeting chaired by chief minister Naveen Patnaik on Wednesday.

The state also aims to increase the drinking water coverage percentage among the rural population to come close to the national level in this regard.

"Our objective is to empower the community for ownership of water assets and build enabling environment to promote public-private partnership models in water management," said an official, adding that out of the Rs 1,000 crore allotted for drinking water in rural areas, the government has already provided Rs 600 crore in 2017-18 fiscal.

Under the water supply pipe for rural areas, the state government has also decided to go ahead with construction of overhead tanks to provide water to rural people under Basudha scheme.