Around 1400 Agency Hamlets Face Drinking Water Crisis
ASR district collector Dinesh Kumar says groundwater has receded in 400 odd hamlets
Visakhapatnam: Around 1400 hamlets in the hilltop areas of the Parvathipuram Manyam and ASR districts face a serious drinking water crisis this summer.
The administrations of these districts are preparing an action plan to ease the crisis. Some 1200 of the problem villages are located in ASR district and 187 in Manyam district.
The problem hamlets in ASR District are located in Ananthagiri, Munchingput, Paderu town and nearby villages, Araku Valley and a few pockets of Hukumpeta bordering the Devarapalli mandal of Anakapalli district.
ASR district collector Dinesh Kumar said groundwater has receded in 400 odd hamlets. Most of these villages depend on spring water sources and they often dry up in mid-summer. “We have identified 360 permanent spring water sources in the agency so far,” he stated.
“Under the Jal Jeevan Mission, we have provided piped water to 300 villages. More such villages will be covered in the coming months,’’ the collector told Deccan Chronicle.
He said an action plan has been prepared to deal with the crisis. This would cost around Rs 630 crore. The plan would permanently solve the drinking water crisis in the entire ASR district, he said.
In Parvathipuram Manyam district, collector Shyam Prasad has asked the officials to prepare an action plan by March 15 so that the crisis can be mitigated in the peak summer months of May and June.
In a teleconference with the officials on Sunday, the collector said no drinking water issue should arise from any part of the district.
The collector asked the officials to take up desiltation of bore wells, do maintenance works and provide drinking water to remote habitats under the Jal Jeevan Mission. If necessary, funds worth Rs 1 crore would be sought from the ITDA to augment the water supply.
He said that during the summer all the 7217 hand pumps repairs should be done in 15 mandals at a cost of Rs 75 lakh, which could be drawn from mandal parishad as per the orders of the Panchayat Raj commissioner.
District rural water supply engineering officer, Prabhakar Rao, said a total of 187 habitations were identified as “drinking water crisis-prone habitations.”
