Panchayatraj and Rural Development Minister Peddireddy Ramachandra Reddy, who is also the district in-charge Minister, drew the attention of local MLAs and officials on the urgent need to curb the farmer deaths in Anantapur district.
At a review meeting for the first time after becoming the district in-charge Minister, Mr. Ramachandra Reddy asked officials to ensure the loans of the farmers are rescheduled and based on information from the local MLAs, the bankers, Agriculture Department officials and others must ensure that interest burden does not fall on them. This should be checked every three months, he added. He asked officials to get in touch with bankers regarding loans and have a coordination on all these aspects.
Expressing concern over the Agriculture Department officials’ lack of initiative to come to the rescue of farmers, he said that at many places they do not interact with farmers either on crop loans, seeds to be obtained or irrigation methods.
Singanamala MLA Jonnalagadda Padmavathy and Government Whip Kapu Ramachandra Reddy complained of severe drinking water problem in majority of the rural areas and alleged that focus was only on providing water to urban areas. At Singanamala, the MLA alleged lack of coordination between RWS and R&B engineers, which was leading to a difficult situation and suffering for people. MLC Samantakamani also wanted to know if at least this year drinking water would be released into tanks near the canal running through Singanamala constituency.
While the Minister said 330 tankers were serving drinking water in urban areas, ₹584 crore worth work was in progress in the district for reaching water to every household within the next two years under Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) scheme. The irrigation officials said there was problem for providing water to Anantapur town as there was 1 tmcft in PABR Dam, 0.67 tmcft in Chitravathi Balancing Reservoir and 0.2 tmcft at Gollapalli Reservoir.
There was severe drinking problem in Gooty and Guntakal as there was only 2,000 million litres available in Guntakal.
District Collector S. Satyanarayana also participated in the review meeting.
