The State government proposes to set up control rooms and mobile squads to monitor drinking water situation dadily during the summer months in all district head quarters in the state.
Speaking to media persons after a day long review meeting with deputy commissioners (DCs) and chief executive officers (CEOs) of all districts in Bangalore on Thursday, Governor Rameshwar Thakur said there is no dearth of funds for providing drinking water.
At the meeting the DCs as well as CEOs were instructed to prepare contingency plans or master plans to meet the shortage of drinking water that might arise during summer.
However the Governor did not specify how many villages are likely to face drinking water problem and how much funds would be required.
Thakur said the DCs have been directed to open control rooms with a dedicated phone line and three officials to mitigate water crisis in villages.
Besides registering complaints, the staff in the control room should monitor the water scarcity daily and take steps to repair borewells. Similar mechanism could also help tackle the water problem in large towns, he said. State Chief Secretary Sudhakar Rao said that already some villages in a few districts were experiencing drinking water problem.
“Water is being supplied through tankers in these villages”, he added.
Budget
At the meeting Thakur also sought the views of the officers on the schemes to be included in the coming budget.
Asked what per centage of funds earmarked in the previous budget has been spent so far, Mr Thakur gave no specific reply but said that per centage of utilisation varied from scheme to scheme and department to department.
Mr Thakur said that he would hold discussions Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram on the fiscal performance of the budget during latter’s visit to Bangalore on February 16.
It is learnt from official sources that at the meeting Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited (KPTCL) officials spoke about pending dues of Rs 1100 crore to it from gram panchayats and problems related to power supply.
A top official warned that the Government would not release grants to gram panchayats if local bodies failed to clear pending power bills every quarterly to the KPTCL.
SC SEEKS QUICK RESPONSE
The State government has filed its response to an application filed by Tamil Nadu before the Supreme Court, seeking a direction to restrain Karnataka from taking up, executing or commissioning new check dams, irrigation works and lift irrigation schemes creating new ayacut.
The Supreme Court has asked the Karnataka government to file its response within two weeks.
Chief Secretary Sudhakar Rao said the response has been prepared after consulting legal and irrigation experts.
When his attention was drawn to the statement made by a Tamil Nadu minister regarding taking up of a power project at Hogenakal, Mr Rao said he had seen the report in news papers and directed the Principal Secretary to Energy to look into the matter.
“As I am not fully aware of the developments, I don’t want to make any off-hand remarks”, he remarked.
