Abundant Rainfall Fails To Cheer Irrigation Staff 

By A S Joel Kumar

Deputy Bureau Chief

Sakshi TV

With good rains blessing both the Telugu states, most of the major and minor irrigation projects are full and overflowing bringing cheer to the farmers. Even the common man on the street is happy as the ground water levels have gone up. The decades of water crisis has come to an end with abundant water for irrigation and domestic needs.

However, the personnel working on various irrigation projects in Telangana are not all happy.

One look at the biggest irrigation project in Telangana state, Sriram Sagar (SRSP) project would explain the situation. The project located in Pochampadu village of Balkonda mandal in Nizambad district has a water level of 1091 feet and capacity of 90 tmc. With its 18 lakh acre ayacut spread in Nizamabad, Adilabad, Warangal, Khammam and Karimnagar districts, has command area canals named Saraswati Canal, Lakshmi Canal, Kakatiya Canal and Flood Flow canal. In all, SRSP has 42 gates. This project failed to receive enough inflows for two consecutive years bringing the storage to almost dead.

But on September 24 night Pochampadu village received 39 cm rainfall. Simultaneously many areas of Maharastra state received 20 cm. With this SRSP received 5 lakh cusecs water. Even now the reservoir is getting inflows not less than one lakh cusecs water daily. Till now the reservoir got inflows to the tune of 200 TMC. On September 24 night itself the authorities monitored the situation and opened 36 out of 42 gates. Later, as per the inflows the gates are being lowered and lifted.

This project stated functioning from 1978. At that time there were almost 100 personnel used to work for maintainence and operation of the gates and the entire project. Now their number is just 15. “Whether there are inflows or not the work on the gates should go on. The gates need greasing oiling at regular intervals. At a time when there is emergency we have to work as per the situation not as per shifts”, says Pasha, main mazdoor working at the SRSP.

From the the last week of September, engineers and other maintenance and operation staff are working round the clock monitoring the water levels. As per the inflows gates are being lowered and lifted simultaneously. “With the shortage of man power we are facing difficulties in managing the situation but situation is under control” says SRSP superintendent engineer Satyanarayana.

On the other hand power generation at SRSP is also in full swing. “All the four 9 MW turbines are working and we are very happy about it”, says divisional engineer Gangadhar.

Close look at another dam in Nizamabad district was no better. It is Nizamsagar project located in Achampet village of Nizamsagar mandal with 2,36,000 acre ayacut in 15 mandals. The foundation stone for this project was laid in 1923 by the then Hyderbad state irrigation expert Nawaz Jung Bahadur and dam came into being in 1931.

This historic reservoir has two types of gates for operation. First 28 gates are operated manually, while 20 other gates are run by power. The project height is 1405 feet with capacity of 17.8 TMC. With recent rains the reservoir is full and first instance 28 gates were lifted. Later as per water inflows gates are monitored despite manpower shortage. Earlier 23 personel were monitoring the dam maintainance and operations. But now only six of them are working round the clock. “We are having a tough time working on the reservoir”, says main mazdoor Kamalaiah.

The situation of the workers working on the field is very pathetic. They don’t have uniform allowance and hence they do not come to work on the reservoir with uniform. “We are not provided uniform allowance and also safety kits”, says work inspector Poshetty.

This being the situation at irrigation projects, the recent rains made the Telangana government to project themselves in the service of people. At SRSP Ministers Pocharam Srinivas Reddy , Etala Rajender released water into Flow flow canal and Kakatiya Canal.

With recent rains rivers are over flowing, reservoirs are brimming and people are happy. But the water keepers of reservoirs are struggling. Hope the situation of these water keepers will change with government intervention.