Over 300 persons, including young children and elderly persons, are down with chickenpox, malaria and viral fevers in the Gandikota submersible village, Korrapadu, in Muddanur mandal in Kadapa district and languishing for want of medical assistance.
Korrapadu, the 14th submersible village under Gandikota reservoir, has been waterlogged since a month with release of water from Owk reservoir in Kurnool district to Gandikota reservoir.
The village became waterlogged with storage of five tmcft of water in Gandikota reservoir and would be completely submerged if the storage rises to 12 tmcft.
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Kadapa District Collector K.V. Satyanarayana, GNSS Special Collector and other officials visited the village towards December-end and promised compensation, which was yet to be disbursed, despite issue of a G.O. on January 9.
Almost two to three members of each household are suffering from chicken pox, malaria and viral fevers. As Korrapadu village is surrounded by water, a temporary approach road is the only one they can use. The waterlogging of the village turned out to be a breeding ground for mosquitoes and borewells yielded polluted water, but they have been consuming it for nearly a month.
As the ailing people are not in a position to fend for themselves, they have let off their 15,000 heads of sheep and 2,000 cattle to go to nearby hillocks. Human Rights Forum district convenor K. Jayasri apprised Kadapa DMHO Nagaraju of their plight and he deputed a lady doctor and four ANMs to the village, but they saw the situation and returned saying they did not carry any medicines with them.
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RDO gheraoed
Meanwhile, farmers of Chowtapalle in Kondapuram mandal gheraoed Jammalamadugu RDO Vinayakam in the R&B Guest House at Kondapuram on Friday evening, deploring delay in disbursing compensation and alleging that several genuine beneficiaries were left out and ineligible ones given compensation.
Earlier, the RDO disbursed compensation cheques to about 400 families and promised disbursal later to rest of people.