“Here people are bathing their children on wired cots so that they can save that water for reuse like washing of clothes or for cattle. Years together the same situation has been prevailing at Narayanakhed constituency, but nothing transpired in the last 60 years,” was the frequent comment made by Irrigation Minister T. Harish Rao during by-election campaign about a month ago at Narayanakhed.
He was successful in seeing that party candidate M. Bhupal Reddy won the elections. But, the fate of the residents of this tanda has not changed. Still some of them follow the practice of bathing their children on write cot so that they can save water.
“There is no other way to go, but to follow some system to save water for other requirements. This is nothing new and not limited only to our area. At many tandas the similar situation prevails and this was repeatedly reported by media. Probably our fate is like this,” says Mangla Bai, one of the residents of Kuba tanda under Erakpally Panchayat limits with 34 houses and 150 population. Either way, they have to walk for about four km to get water if the water supplied by water tanker arranged by the Rural Water Supply (RWS) not sufficient. The department has been supplying minimum 15 litres of water for each person through tanks and many a times it has been crossing even 30 litres to 35 litres.
Even the Narayanakhed constituency headquarters has also been facing serious water problem.
“We are supplying more than 30 tankers of water each day, but it seems that they are not sufficient. We are getting complaints of insufficient supply every day. Unequal distribution was one of the reasons and the other is that they are not assured supply of water for the next day. Hence whoever were able to save for the next day were stocking water creating some problem in supply to all the required,” said an officer of the Irrigation Department.
“Drought is severe and we are not sure whether we can supply similar amount in the next few weeks. The situation is deteriorating day-by-day,” the official added.
Rural Water Supply Department provides minimum 15 litres of water to each person and many times it touches 30 litres to 35 litres
