In a campaign to popularise water conservation methods in the state, the Communications and Capacity Development Unit (CCDU) under the Water Resources Department, is joining hands with the National Savings Scheme (NSS) of the Finance Department.

Under the scheme ‘Jalasampadhyam’, set to be inaugurated at the state-level here on Tuesday, the NSS will provide the ‘army’ and the CCDU the ‘ammunition’ to take the message of water conservation to all the households in the state.

“There are around 79 lakh families in the state and between 65-66 lakh of these are visited by our agents at least once every month as part of collecting savings,” NSS Director Jose Jacob said.

“With around 11,000 agents, mostly women and many of them housewives, the NSS has the largest number of personnel than any other department. Nobody will be able to deliver the message of water conservation at the grassroot-level better.”

This “army of agents”, as Jacob calls them, will be trained by the CCDU at the state, district, sub-district and block levels over the course of the coming two months, CCDU director V Subhash Chandra Bose said.“We will introduce the resource persons of the NSS to methods of rainwater harvesting, well-recharge, creation of soak pits, and basic sanitation concepts such as not to construct toilets near water sources, how to test the quality of water etc,” Bose said.“This will help overcome our shortage of personnel as the NSS agents will take with them leaflets prepared by us when they go on their monthly calls,” he said. This, Bose said, will be a year-long campaign where the agents trained by the CCDU would visit the houses.Finance Minister K M Mani will inaugurate the scheme at the Govt Guest House here on Tuesday evening.