Acute drinking water scarcity in villages merged with GWMC

Warangal: The residents of the villages, which were merged with Greater Warangal Municipal Corporation (GWMC), are reeling under severe shortage for drinking water even as the Corporation authorities claiming that they are addressing the crisis.

• 42 villages of six mandals in the vicinity of Warangal district headquarters merged into the Corporation in 2013

Even after three years after merging the 42 villages of six mandals, namely Hasanparthy, Atmakur, Dharmasagar, Jafarghad, Hanamkonda and Shayampet in the vicinity of Warangal district headquarters into the Corporation in 2013, no measures were taken to improve water supply system in the villages.

As a result, the residents are left high and dry. Public bore wells and other types of wells have dried up in the villages and water distribution systems locally available are not functioning properly after the villages were merged with the Corporation. The residents in Arepalli, Paidipalli, Kothapet, Timmapur, Hasanparthy, Vangapahad, Nakkalapalli, Mogilicharla along with many others are facing tough to get drinking water to meet their daily needs.

For instance, at Arepalli village there are about 15 bore wells and half of them are not functioning and water could be pumped for just 15 to 20 minutes from the bore wells that repaired. Chintalcheruvu and Turkacheruvu in the village are dried up rendering a local de-fluoride project useless.

“There is a public water distribution system with an overhead tank and a bore well to supply water to the residents. Before their merger with the GWMC, water used to be supplied after every three days, but now, now water is being supplied once in ten days,” lamented a resident Nagabelly Rajalakshmi.

The GWMC corporation officials are claiming that they are supplying water through tankers regularly but water tankers are seen in the village once in a week. The water supplied through tankers was not sufficient to meet the needs of the locals, she told The Hans India on Sunday.

“We are paying Rs 90 towards monthly cards for buying drinking water from a water filter point set up by an NGO, as the quality of water supplied through tankers and water taps is not good,” she informed. The same is the complaint of a resident Mohammad Safia of Hasanparthy village. “The corporation officials should increase the number of tankers and supply water daily.

They should devise a permanent solution to address the water crisis’ she added. Wardhannapet MLA A Ramesh said the issue of water crisis has been raised during the recent meeting of GWMC Council and the Corporation engineers were asked to take extra care to address drinking water crisis.

Responding on the issue, Warangal Mayor N Narender said, “We are aware of the problem and initiated measures to address it. The Corporation officials are directed to hire additional tankers to supply water to the merged villages and also to increase the number of tankers per village”. It is decided to press into service 70 tankers to supply water to the villages, the Mayor added.