Kurnool: Acute drinking water shortage and severe drought conditions have been haunting contestants in Kurnool Lok Sabha constituency as voters pull the leaders for neglecting them.
A Telugu Desam candidate in Srisailam constituency was questioned by the villagers for his apathetic attitude in the last five years in solving basic necessities such as drinking water.
Budda Rajasekhar Reddy, who hesitated to stand in the fight, was persuaded by N. Chandrababu Naidu to remain in fray.
Srisailam constituency, carved out of the fringes of Nallamala and Atmakur town, has peculiar problems such as mananimal conflicts, forest encroachments, cases of wild life abuses etc. in which the local leader hardly could have a say.
The drought conditions and labour migration are more of a routine in Adoni, Alur, Mantralayam, Yemmiganur constituencies. The villages, on the border of Karnataka sta-te, are more prone to vag-aries of nature, said a TD leader.
Kotla Surya Prakash Reddy, the TD candidate for Kurnool Lok Sabha seat, said that once the Gundrevula reservoir is completed, water woes of majority of villages in Adoni, Alur, Yemmiganu would be solved.
K.E. Krishnamurthy, as the Deputy Chief Mini-ster, had promised that he was committed to getting irrigation facilities and drinking water to the villages. But it just remained on paper.
The Rural Water Supply (RWS) engineers were as-ked to complete laying pipelines and overhead tanks, but safe drinking water is still a luxury in villages of Yemmiganur, Alur and Adoni.
“KE had promised that he would get KC canal water to western parts of the district but the promise did not move an inch,” said Veerappa, a resident of Thuggali.
On labour migration, Mr Surya Prakash Reddy had said that Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme would be extended for larger periods in a year so that people can get meaningful employment.
A labour department official at Adoni said that wages for migrant labour in Bengaluru were attractive at construction sites as a woman labourer is paid Rs 800 per day while men could earn as much as Rs 2,000 per day. With that kind of wages, it is difficult to curtail labour migration.
Meanwhile, political parties have been funding people to get back the migrant labourers from Bengaluru and Kerala to ensure that they vote in the elections to the respective parties.
