It is a case of the proverbial slip between the cup and the lip for quite a few habitations in the Ranga Reddy district, which lie around the peripheral areas of GHMC.
While it was targeted to give piped drinking water to 47 habitations in the district by 2013 under the Manjeera Water Supply Project Phase-II, 37 of these villages are yet to receive even a drop of water through the scheme. And though major pipeline works to facilitate water flow was completed long ago, lack of supply from the Shankarpally reservoir is making safe drinking water a pipe dream for the villagers, inform officials from the district.
The Rural Water Supply Department in the district had finished laying major pipelines to supply water to 13 villages in Shankarpally and Moinabad mandals and 24 villages of Chevella mandal, nearly five months ago. Expense for the works amounted to Rs.18 crore.
However, due to the failure of the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (the Water Board) to supply sufficient quantity of water to the Shankarpally reservoir, all these villages are forced to go thirsty.
The villages in Shankarpally and Moinabad include Pedda Mangalaram, Appojiguda, Chandanagar, Chinna Mangalaram, Devuni Venkatapur, Himayatnagar, Medipally, Mothkupally, Quthbuddinguda, Reddypally among others, while those in Chevella include almost all of the mandal, the district’s Executive Engineer, RWS, D. Venkata Ramana said.
“We just need to finish electrical works for Chevella, which can be done within no time after the Water Board expresses its readiness to supply water. We need 20 lakh litres of water per day to Shankarpally reservoir to supply to these habitations,” he said. However, the Water Board is obliged to supply only about 20,000 Kilo Litres of water per day (KLD) to the district as per the previous agreement, whereas the actual supplies now are nearly 29,000 KLD. Proposals to increase the allocations were made, but no decision has been taken yet.
To supply to all the habitations surrounding the GHMC area, the HMWS&SB would need 70,000 KLD of water. Due to the influx of migrants, there is huge demand for water from the city peripheries, which the Board is not able to address with its limited resources.
