Bhubaneswar: Residents of all urban areas in the city will get piped water connection by 2020.

The public health engineering organisation (Pheo) has prepared a standard operating procedure to realise chief minister Naveen Patnaik's commitment to ensure 100 per cent drinking water supply to the urban households. Naveen had committed to provide the service in August last year while launching the Unnati scheme.

The procedure is part of Pheo's vision document - Universal Water Supply to Households by 2020.

In the first phase, the organisation will conduct special drives in various pockets and encourage people to take piped water connections. During the drive, the Pheo officials will help people get on-the-spot connections without visiting its office.

The officials will provide information on the process, the documents needed and other modalities.

"We have taken up various projects to increase the water supply coverage. The urban poor already get water for free. However, there are still many people, mainly the middle and upper-middle classes, who do not have our connection and procure water from other sources," said Pheo's superintending engineer C.R. Jena.

He said the primary target, according to the operating procedure, are the middle and upper middle classes.

"Many people are of the view that the supplied water is not safe. But, the reality is different. We conduct regular inspections and safety audits. We will make efforts to sensitise people about this."

"We have strengthen our water-testing laboratories over the time to check on possible contamination of water. We had automated our lab at Palasuni in 2015 and opened a central water and wastewater testing laboratory in October. We have a strict mechanism for this," said Jena.

The Pheo officials will then conduct surveys of all the wards and make a list of those who are still bereft of the supplied water. In the process, they will be covered under the free water supply scheme.

The officials will also conducts surveys on streets and explore options to install stand posts and fixed water tanks for the passers-by.

Pheo has been constructing overhead and underground reservoirs and laying pipelines across the city to strengthen the supply system under the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (Amrut) scheme.

At present, the organisation supplies 295.30 million litres of water daily (MLD) to households here against a requirement of 120.62MLD - based on the city's nine lakh population. However, reports suggest that 33 of the city's 67 wards are yet to be covered completely under the supply chain. Pheo's registered consumers for water supply stand at 65,000.

"People will happily take the connection if it is provided without much paperwork and hassle. The officials will need to ensure that the water supplied is safe for consumption. In the past, we had witnessed outbreaks of jaundice because of the contaminated water supplied by Pheo," said Unit-VIII resident Jagannath Mishra.