People continue to suffer as MB works move on slow track

Mahbubnagar: The much-publicised and the most prestigious Mission Bhagiratha project in Mahbubnagar district seems to see no near completion as the authorities concerned responsible for construction and commissioning of the project in Palamuru region have further postponed the deadline from March 31 to April 30.

With the postponement of deadline for the consecutive second time, the hopes of rural people, who are expecting to get safe drinking water, have been dashed and they continue to suffer due to lack of drinking water facilities in their villages.

"Though Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao has promised that Mission Bhagiratha water would reach all villages in the district by March 31, till date the authorities have not yet laid the water pipelines and no water tank is constructed. Only the head valve has been constructed and there is still a lot of work with regard to laying of internal pipeline needs to be done. We are facing hardships due to lack of water as the authorities have dismantled the old pipelines and the earlier borewells supplying water to the village expecting that Mission Bhagiratha water would be supplied soon to the village," said Mudavth Shankar, a ward member of Kotta Thanda village in Jadcherla mandal.

In fact, earlier, the Chief Minister had promised that all the rural villages across Telangana would get tapped drinking water by December 31, 2018. From there on because of various issues and technical problems, the government has been continuously postponing the works.

If one looks at the ground report on the progress of the mammoth Rs 43,791 crore project aimed at providing piped drinking water to 2.23 crore people residing in 20 lakh households across in the State, the project works in Mahbubnagar district are yet to go a long way before it is commissioned to provide clean drinking water

The district authorities claim that more than 80 per cent of works have been completed so far and if all goes well as planned, the people of the district might see the Krishna water gushing into the pipelines only after May 31, 2019. However, if one keenly observes the progress of works going, it can be said that the authorities are completely neglecting to carry out the works at the expected pace to meet April 30 deadline.

It is also revealed that in many cases the officials are giving fabricated details of the project progress. For instance, there are times when officials declare that project works in a particular village are complete just by providing water to a single ward.

"In many instances the officials are claiming to have provided water to the villages by just laying a single pipeline while a lot of work needs to be completed," said Shankar.

Meanwhile, B Chinna Reddy, Mission Bhagiratha Superintending Engineer said that despite of their efforts to complete the project in time, there are various technical reasons for the delay.

However, he expressed optimism that Mahbubnagar district would get the Mission Bhagiratha water by May 2019 as they have completed laying of 737 kilometres of pipelines and constructed 1,000 tanks across erstwhile Mahbubnagar district so far.