Fifty-year-old Srinivasulu suffering from skeleton fluorosis tries in vain to match the speed of senior YSR Congress Party leader Y.V. Subba Reddy, now on a 210-km walkathon to know when the Pula Subbaiah Veligonda project will be completed.
Anxiety was writ large on the faces of hundreds of women with dental fluorosis en route who joined him in the padayatra from Kanigiri to Pedda Dornala at the Kocarla Kota near the Veligonda project site, as fluoride-affected Prakasam district faced drought for 10 years in the last 15 years, forcing the people living in the western parts to sink borewells deeper and ending up consuming water with higher concentration of fluoride. As a result, 420 persons with fluoride-induced kidney disease from Kanigiri and other parts of the district succumbed to it between 2015 and 2017.
The former Chief Whip of the YSRCP in Parliament, sharing their concern over the project progressing at a “snail's pace”, reassured them that “on coming to power, YSRCP chief Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy will allocate sufficient funds and ensure the completion of the first phase of the project within one year and the second phase of the project within a maximum of two years to provide drinking water to 15 lakh people and irrigation to 4.26 lakh acres.”
“The tunnel cannot be drilled beyond 12 metres a day given the tough nature of work and the laborious process of removing the excavated material out of the tunnel,” adds Mr. Subba Reddy, who has done a good number of contracts in his career.
Mr. Subba Reddy, who crossed the 175-km mark on foot on Sunday, recalled in a conversation with The Hindu that it was the former CM Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy who completed more than 70% of the project works.