Over a hundred villages in Mysuru district are facing acute drinking water scarcity. Drinking water is being provided to these villages through tankers.
This was revealed at a special drought review meeting held on Monday under the chairmanship of H.C. Mahadevappa, PWD Minister and also Mysuru district in-charge.
As many as 41 villages in Mysuru taluk, 24 in Nanjangud, 16 of Hunsur, 17 of H.D. Kote and six of T. Narsipura are being provided drinking water through tankers. Though some villages in the other two taluks – K.R. Nagar and Piriyapatna – are facing water shortage, their situation was not as bad.
D. Randeep, Deputy Commissioner, said that there were sufficient funds under the Calamity Relief Fund (CRF). He noted that he had released over ₹10 crores so far to the taluks to face the problem.
Manjunath, Exeuctive Engineer, Department of Rural Drinking Water Supply, said that over 1,061 works to provide drinking water had been taken up at an estimated cost of ₹1,200 lakh. Of these, 943 had been completed and 118 were under way. Besides this, over 362 additional works were to be taken up at a cost of ₹480 lakhs, he said. He added that changing of pipelines and deepening of borewells was taken up.
Multi-village projects
Apart from this, 31 multi-village drinking water supply projects were initiated at a cost of ₹288 crore in the district. Of these, 14 were completed, and 15 were in progress. Two others are yet to be taken up.
Prasad Murthy, Deputy Director of Animal Husbandry, said the department had purchased over 1,330 metric tonnes of fodder and distributed 978 metric tonnes to farmers at a subsidised rate. He said that 352 metric tones of fodder were stored. This was expected to last a few more weeks.
Mr. Murthy said it had been proposed to set up five goshalas across the district. Over 36,000 fodder mini-kits were provided to farmers and the department had sought 12.000 more such kits for the district.
Dredging of tanks
Mr. Randeep said that works to clear silt from tanks were taken up in 21 tanks and a proposal to clean up 39 more tanks in the second phase had been sent to the government.
Lakshminarayan, District in-charge secretary, Shivashankar, Chief Executive Officer, T. Venkatesh, Additional Deputy Commissioner, Mahesh, Commissioner of Mysuru Urban Development Authority, participated in the meeting.
