Hyderabad, June 21: Chief Minister K Rosaiah has given a call for coordinated efforts from all departments concerned to take up immediate repairs and maintenance of all minor irrigation tanks on a war footing to see that rain water is fully harvested and conserved for irrigation regeneration of ground water purposes.
The Chief Minister issued fresh guidelines and directed the officials of Revenue, Panchayat Raj, Rural Development, Irrigation and Agriculture to work together in strengthening the minor irrigation tanks and preventing breaches in monsoon.
He had asked the officials to submit a comprehensive report within a month on the status of all minor irrigation works and the steps being taken to prevent breaches.
The Chief Minister discussed about the measures to protect all minor irrigation tanks and to prevent any breach during the monsoon with minor irrigation minister Sunitha Lakshma Reddy, principal secretary SP Tucker, Irrigation Department special secretary AK Jain, today.
He said special attention would be given to all irrigation tanks affecting railway tracks. The nearest railway authority should be informed whenever such tanks receive rain water up to 0.3 meters of full tank level for necessary precautions, Rosaiah instructed.
Issuing guidelines in this regard, Rosaiah stated that all sluice gates of irrigation tanks should be serviced and kept ready for operations in times of emergency. Constant patrolling of tank bunds was needed wherever vulnerable breaches were identified and roundtheclock monitoring was must, he said.
Field staff should be instructed to inspect the approaches of surplus weir and keep them obstructionfree, villagers should be involved in patrolling and monitoring of minor irrigation tanks during the monsoon, manpower had to be organised with communication equipment and officials should make use of all media channels TV, radio and other communications to alert the villagers, the Chief Minister directed.
All superintending engineers should set up control rooms in circle offices with immediate effect and SEs should maintain ‘flood stores’ with requisite number of empty cement bags, sand, casurina ballies, bamboos etc, he instructed.
The Chief Minister said that powers were delegated to the district collectors for according administrative approval for immediate restoration works.
Rosaiah wanted the officials to make villagers as partners in this task by spreading awareness among them on the advantage of conserving rain water like benefit to standing crops, ground water regeneration and also for use of cattle. He said had learnt that during the rains and floods of 2009 over 1,000 irrigation tanks had sustained breaches and restoration works had to be taken up to store water and save standing crops.
Rosaiah specifically directed that not even a single drop of water should be wasted.
“Water is precious. There was drought in the state last year. The monsoon has set in and there is widespread rainfall in the state. Farmers are happy over the timely rainfall,” he said.
“I do not want a repetition of last year wherein heavy rainfall breached tank bunds and caused floods leading to not only loss of lives, cattle and standing crops but also wastage of precious water. I will not tolerate if tanks are breached and water is wasted whichever may be the area or district, be cautioned,” Rosaiah said.
——-Agencies