Nashik: Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and deputy chief minster Ajit Pawar today virtually inaugurated state’s maiden centre for excellence in water supply and sanitation sector that will impart training to delegates not only from across the country but even abroad.
In his inaugural address, Thackeray stressed on balanced development keeping in harmony with nature and hoped the newly-raised training centre in the premises of Maharashtra Environmental Engineering Training and Research Academy (MEETRA) at Nashik will prove to be real ‘Mitra’ (friend) of sustainable development.

“In today’s world, it seems that development and environment are antonyms. Our stress is that development should never be at the cost of environment and hence, this centre at MEETRA will help us change the picture,” said Thackeray.
Minister of food, civil supplies and consumer protection and Nashik district guardian minister Chhagan Bhujbal, agriculture minister Dadaji Bhuse, water supply and sanitation minister Gulabrao Patil were present at the centre.

The Centre has three green buildings, a fully computerised R&D facility, training centres, administrative block and hostel that can accommodate over 200 trainees at a time. The R&D set will carry out extensive research related to clean drinking water supply and sanitation.
Pawar said that Nashik will also have Krishi Bhavan soon. In addition to building institutions, they should also be run in a quality manner and the government should make every effort to ensure that they are used in the long run. The result of those efforts is ‘Mitra’, he said.