With the increasing irrigation potential in the State the Telangana government has decided to exempt the engineers and other staff of the Irrigation Department from being drawn for duties other than the departmental work, including duties pertaining to other developmental programmes and election duties by the Revenue Department.
According to officials of the Irrigation Department, the decision has been taken following the request made by the higher authorities of the department. During a recent meeting chaired by Principal Secretary (Irrigation), it was brought to his notice that drafting of the irrigation engineers and other staff by the Revenue Department for other duties of developmental programmes and election duties has been causing severe shortage of hands for effective water regulation and other operation and maintenance works.
“Drafting of irrigation staff, including engineers, for other than the departmental work has been a major handicap in water regulation and related duties when the release of water for irrigation has been in the critical stages of crop cultivation. As a result, we have been finding it difficult to attend to the emergency situations in water regulation in the recent past,” explained a Chief Engineer.
Non-availability of irrigation engineers, particularly the assistant executive engineers and deputy executive engineers for water regulation duties following their drafting by the Revenue Department for other developmental programmes has also been resulting in wastage of water in terms of its release to distributaries beyond requirement sometimes, the irrigation officials pointed out.
Availability of engineers has become necessary as lifting of water through major projects such as Kaleshwaram, Kalwakurthy and Bhakta Ramadasu besides scores of others and also release of water to the ayacut under Nagarjunasagar, Sriramsagar, Kaddam, Jurala and other projects as also minor irrigation tanks is in progress, the senior engineer stated. Accordingly, the Principal Secretary has decided to exempt the irrigation engineers and staff for non-departmental duties.
