No need to worry, Collector Dinesh Kumar assures farmers

Ongole (Prakasam District): Prakasam District Collector AS Dinesh Kumar on Friday inspected the third gate of Gundlakamma Project, which was damaged on Thursday due to heavy floods, and assured farmers under the ayacut not to worry about shortage of irrigation water.

After the inspection of the gate, the Collector said that the girders at the bottom of the gate didn't withstand the flood and swept away and the attempts to prevent water leakage by fixing the stop-lock gate were in vain. He assured the farmers that the expert team from Vijayawada was monitoring the situation and would start repairing the gate once the water flow can be managed. He said that they observed slight leakage from 6th and 7th gates also, and they were also included in the repair task. He assured that they would well maintain the project gates in future so that the situation won't repeat.

Collector Dinesh Kumar said that there will not be any issues for water to the crops under the project and they would keep enough water for the Kharif by considering the water inflow in future. He assured the cage culture and other aqua activity also will not be affected due to water loss from the project now. Informing that the locals complained to him about people from other areas fishing in the project illegally, he directed the authorities to take action against them.

Projects SE Yastika Undru, JD Fisheries Chandrasekhar Reddy, Ongole RDO Visweswara Rao, Special Deputy Collectors Sarala Vandanam and Gloria, tahsildar Lakshminarayana and project engineers accompanied the Collector during the inspection.