GUNTUR: Bringing significant relief to the residents of tail-end areas and merged villages in Guntur Municipal Corporation (GMC) limits, the long-standing shortage of drinking water will soon be resolved as construction work on the long-pending Gorantla water reservoir is set to gain pace.
During the general body meeting held on Saturday, the corporators, MLCs, and public representatives highlighted the delays in the project and urged officials to expedite its completion.
In response, newly appointed GMC Commissioner P Srinivasulu visited the project site on Sunday and directed the officials to complete the pending work on a war footing.
In 2010, 10 villages were merged with GMC, including Gorantla, Reddypalem, Pedapalakaluru, Nallapadu, Chowdavaram, Naidupet, Potturu, Ankireddypalem, Etukuru, and Budampadu. Since then, the civic body has been providing drinking water through tankers, which has been far from sufficient. For the past decade, residents in these villages and tail-end parts of the city have suffered from insufficient drinking water, a situation exacerbated during summer.
In 2017, a drinking water project was initiated at Gorantla under the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) scheme, with a budget of Rs 33 crore. The 53 MLD project includes a 10 km pipeline and two reservoirs, one with a capacity of 600 KL and another with 4,200 KL. This project is expected to benefit approximately 2.34 lakh people in the merged villages. However, due to various reasons, including delays in obtaining the required permissions, unavailability of suitable land, and the Covid-19 pandemic, the project has been delayed for the past few years.
While the two reservoirs are nearly complete, the bottleneck of the project lies in connecting the pipeline from the hilltop reservoirs to the underground network. According to civic officials, construction has been slow due to a fund crunch. Last year, works worth Rs 5 to Rs 6 crore were completed, but the contractor has yet to receive the full payment, leading to a halt in the work. The civic chief has instructed officials to ensure the contractor completes the remaining construction and that the due payments are made as soon as possible. Villagers await the completion of the project, hoping they will have sufficient drinking water by the next summer season.
