Eshwarappa demands white paper on drinking water, Makes Villagers to Wait 2 hours
Udupi: A drought assessment team of BJP, led by K S Eshwarappa visited drought-hit villages in Kurkalu, Ninnipade of Udupi taluk and assessed the situation on Wednesday, April 13.
Speaking to media persons after inspecting the drought-hit areas Eshwarappa said that the state is facing severe drinking water shortage and government is not taking any steps to mitigate the crisis. The ministers and officials have not visited the rural areas where the intensity of drought is severe. All the ministers and MLA’s are busy only in resolving their internal issues. The government has failed to respond to the woes of the people, he criticised.
The Bharatiya Janata party has constituted 12 teams to travel to the drought-hit districts to assess the situation. The government has failed to tackle the drought situation and the villagers in several villages are struggling to fetch a pot of water.
The district minister in-charge Vinay Kumar Sorake who is a powerful minister in state cabinet is not taking any measures in his district towards the supply of drinking water. The Rural development minister HK Patil assured that 7000 drinking water units would be constructed before March 2016, but the government failed to construct the water units. An amount of Rs 2500 crore is due for the contractors of multi-village drinking water schemes in the state. “Yesterday my team visited Dakshina Kannada, where the state government was to set 303 drinking water units, so far no plants have been set up”, he added.
It was sad to know that the state government was not in a position to pay the agency as the advance, the 10 percent of the total cost to start the work. When the BJP government was in power 29 multi-village drinking water projects were sanctioned to Udupi district, till now not even a single project has been completed. He demanded a white paper comparing the achievement in the water supply of the present government and the previous BJP-led government in the state.
District BJP Thingle Vikramarjuna Hegde, Zilla panchayat member Gitanjali Suvarna, Shilpa Suvarna, Gurme Suresh Shetty and others were present.
Complaints galore:
Residents of Ninnipade under Kurkalu Village with a population of 150, is in the grip of drinking water shortage. The residents of Maradi have been experiencing drinking water shortage for several years. A resident from Kurkalu Ninnipade speaking to Mangalorean.com correspondent said that we have 43 houses in this area. Maximum members of every house are daily wage workers. We are suffering a lot and we have to walk kilometres to fetch a pot of water. Sometimes we receive water from tankers, the water that is supplied through the tanker is mixed with clay, making it impossible to use for drinking and cooking, she added.
K S Eshwarappa arrived late after keeping the villagers wait for 2 hours. The villagers being daily wagers earn Rupees 450 per day, the late arrival of K S Eshwarappa made them remain in their homes losing a day’s wages. Eshwarappa arrived at the village having 50 houses facing drinking water problems, he arrived at the village gate and interacted with some of the villagers but failed to arrive at the village and take cognizance of the issues.
Some BJP leaders pointed fingers at the Kaup Constituency MLA Vinay Kumar Sorake for failing to provide drinking water but failed to say that the ZP has not shown any interest in providing drinking water at their place. Eshwarappa interacted with the media persons and later proceeded to other places. The course of the drought inspection meetings needs to be questioned. Kota Srinivas Poojary who is also the team leader of drought inspection committee arrived late by 3 hours.