The Himachal Pradesh Cabinet in its meeting held today decided to create a separate ring-fenced Water Supply and Sewerage Circle to be headed by Superintending Engineer (IPH), with a separate name ‘Greater Shimla Water Supply and Sewerage Circle’ (GWS & SC), having separate account, under the Municipal Corporation, Shimla for delivery of all integrated services related to supply of water and sewerage disposal.
A Technical Monitoring Group (TMG) will be headed by the Chief Secretary, as its Chairman besides Secretary IPH as Member Secretary with other 10 members. The meeting was presided over by Chief Minister Shri Virbhadra Singh.
The Greater Shimla Water Supply and Sewerage System will be an amalgamation of the existing structure available with Municipal Corporation Shimla and the IPH Water Supply & Sewerage Circle Shimla. The SE (IPH) of GWS & SC will be on secondment basis along-with his required staff to the MC.
The Circle will have two divisions viz: Water Production and Sewerage Treatment and Water Distribution and Sewerage Network. The Health Officer of the corporation would be in-charge of the water quality monitoring and surveillance and would control the water testing labs being transferred by IPH to MC Shimla.
A MoU would be signed between State Government and MC Shimla. The World Bank Identification Mission during its recent visit of Shimla in June, 2016 had also agreed that the IPH Department will hire services of a sector specialist to draft the MoU /service agreement between the MC and the IPH for ring-fenced WSS services to be established at the MC Shimla.
