Title - Where people travel by train to fetch a pitcher of safe water….!

April 2, 2013, 10.22 AM  IST

In the mandal headquarters of Donakonda in Prakasam district, every family travels 17 kms to go to neighbouring Gajjalakonda to get four pitchers of drinking water. The village has no source of safe drinking water.

Darsi (Prakasam): Much to the embarrassment of the present day governments, people in these localities continue to admire the erstwhile British Raj for taking care of their welfare in a comparatively better fashion. Imagine the mental agony of people who regularly travel by train to fetch drinking water!

It may sound strange. At mandal headquarters of Donakonda in Prakasam district, every family travels for a distance of 17 kms to go to neighbouring Gajjalakonda to get four pitchers of drinking water. The village has no source of safe drinking water.

The village, famous for its aerodrome where fighter planes used to fill fuel tanks during World War II, is in utter neglect now. The British, who also built a loco shed in the village for coal-fuelled trains, are still regarded by local people for foolproof arrangements they made to quench the thirst of villagers. The five wells constructed by the British in Donakonda stand in proof of the concern for the people shown by the then rulers.

The engineering marvels, which used to cater to drinking water needs of the entire Donakonda area, are now reduced to things of past glory. None of these wells has water because of fast depleting ground water level. The large-scale digging of bore-wells during the past few decades also contributed to the drying up of these famous wells. As the water in these wells slowly disappeared, people began to sense the seriousness of drinking water shortage, especially during the summer.

When the Rs 48-lakh pilot drinking water project failed to serve the purpose, two storage tanks were built at Chandavaram village of the mandal. One of the tanks can be easily filled with water from the adjacent Nagarjuna Sagar canal. The tank is capable of fulfilling the drinking water problems of Kanigiri town, located 90 km away.

However, the water needs of Donakonda are difficult to tackle for the simple reason of the village being connected to the second storage tank. Filling the tank with the canal water is not possible because of its elevated location, besides distanced at 2-km away.

Adding to these technical problems, insufficient release to NS Canal this year and failure to store sufficient water in advance resulted in the seriousness of the problem. On the other hand, people are not ready to risk their health by drinking locally available water that contains fluorine.

People dependent on local water sources have been suffering from diseases of skin and bone.