Hyderabad: Around 2,000 residents of Shaheen Nagar blocked the Srisailam highway for over two hours and staged a dharna on Sunday to protest against the absence of direct water supply to the area for the last six months. Over 10,000 houses in the area have been affected by the absence of water, they alleged.
“We have to buy 20 litres drinking water cans which costs around `15 to `20 and tanks of `1,000 litres for other purposes which costs around `200 from the gram panchayat,” said local resident Syed Ali.
“TRS legislator Teegala Krishna Reddy had visited us to seek votes during the 2014 polls but he never showed up after that. Despite several applications, no Water Board official has came to solve our problem,” said Usmania restaurant head Md Ali.
However, HMWS&SB officials say that they cannot provide piped water until the network – that has been transferred from rural network to metro recently but only on paper – reaches there through laid pipelines.
“It will take another one to two years for our network to reach the rural areas. Till then, residents have to depend on water being supplied by the gram panchayat,” said HMWS&SB division II GM, P Nagender.
Though the metro power board has been supplying water in bulk to the gram panchayats, improper distribution of water is causing enormous problems to the residents. The dharna had caused massive traffic jams in the southern part of the city.
Courtesy: The New Indian Express