Villages reel under water crisis in Kadapa

Kadapa: Due to poor rainfall and drastic fall in ground water levels, the people at several places in the district have been facing acute drinking water scarcity.

According to the officials of Meteorological department, 561.41mm rain fall recorded against 646.7mm normal rain fall from 2019 June to January 2020 in the district.

Owing to shortfall in rains, groundwater levels have come down drastically at various places particularly in Rayachoti and Badvel constituencies where the ground water levels come down to 18.75 metres depth from 17.26 metres in the last December.

As per the government records there are about 23 lakh people are living in 800 Gram Panchayats in the district. Among them, 9,94,437 were getting water through water schemes, remaining were depending on hand pumps, taps, tanks and bore wells.

Drinking water is being supplied through 25 MVS schemes, 1674 Protected Water Schemes, 914 Mini Water Protected Schemes, 2,674 direct water pumping schemes, 11,668 hand pumps in the district.

As per the National Rural Drinking Water Supply Mission (NRDWSM) norms, each person requires 56 litres of water per day for various needs. About 55.30 percent of people living in the urban areas having such facility. It is learnt that Rural Water Scheme (RWS) department currently supplying water to 34,164 people in 70 villages through tankers (at the rate of 20 litres per head) against total 1,064 villages. So the rest of villages are facing water scarcity.

At many places, women are often forced to travel more than a km to secure water. ``We are not in a position to take bath even once in two days . People of other areas are not willing to marry girls from Rayachoti constituency due to water problem," said M Venkataramana Reddy resident of Chenna Reddy Palle village of Rayachoti mandal to The Hans India .

Meanwhile an official said that proposals for Rs 31.60 crore were sent to government to address drinking water problem in the district.