Drinking water to low income households Cabinet approves 150,000 connections in 2020

By Sandun A Jayasekera

Cabinet approval was granted to give drinking water connections to 150,000 low income households during this year at a cost of Rs. 1.2 billion, cabinet spokesman, Higher Education, Information, Communication Technology and New Inventions Minister Bandula Gunawardena said yesterday.  

The Water Supply and Drainage Board has already supplied drinking water connections to 2.4 million consumers covering 41% of the Sri Lankan population while supplying domestic drinking water to 110,000 new consumers, Minister Gunawardena said.   

However, it has become difficult to supply domestic drinking water connections in certain areas although there is an additional demand, as the feeder pipelines have to cover areas not having existing pipe lines. As a result the prospective consumers have to pay approximately Rupees 20,000 as a down payment as well as have to pay charges for renovating the roads when the new pipelines are being laid.  

Therefore, the cabinet approved the proposal tabled by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa to accelerate the programme for supplying 150,000 new domestic water supply connections during the first two quarters of the year in 2020 by taking steps required for eradicating constrains.  

Under this project, consumers will have to pay only Rs.2,000 instead of the Rs.8,000 paid upfront to obtain a water connection and the soft loan of Rs.20,000 can be repaid in 12 instalment, he said.   

The cabinet gave the green light on Wednesday (04) to establish a ‘Premium Real- Estate Portfolio’ to maintain, manage and run state owned and extremely valuable luxury hotels and tourism related assets, Minister Gunawardena said.   

These assets such as Grand Hyatt, Grand Oriental, Hilton and Lotus Tower Shopping Complex are properties of the Treasury, Employees Provident Fund, Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation, Telecommunication Regulatory Commission and Bank of Ceylon.