GULBARGA: Magsaysay Award winner and "water man" Rajendra Singh will visit Gulbarga on March 8 to lay the foundation stone for a percolation tank at Ele Navadagi village in Aland taluk. He will address presidents and vice-presidents of panchayats on the need to conserve water.

Aland MLA B.R. Patil told presspersons here on Thursday that Dr. Singh will lay the foundation stone for one of the 12 percolation tanks to be built in Aland under the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund of NABARD this year.

Mr. Patil said that taking into consideration the severe water crisis in most villages in the taluk, he prepared a master plan to construct 50 percolation tanks at a cost of Rs. 13 crores in the taluk to conserve rainwater. The State Government has so far sanctioned the construction of 12 tanks at a cost of Rs 6. crores, he added. He said the people of the areas where the tanks will be constructed have come forward to donate land if government land is not available.

Mr. Patil said there is a need to launch a movement to take up watershed programmes and construct percolation tanks to conserve water in districts which face drinking water crisis during summer every year.

With Gulbarga being included under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, panchayats should utilise the opportunity to construct percolation tanks and desilt existing tanks to ease the water crisis in rural areas, he added. Expressing dissatisfaction over the water conservation and watershed works taken up by the State Government and panchayat raj institutions in the district, Mr. Patil said officers attached to the Watershed Development Department remain absent from office almost throughout the month.

He said the Government has spent Rs. 11 crores on watershed development works in the district in the past two years. But none of the watershed development works taken up by the department has yielded benefits to the people, he alleged.

Gram panchayats in the district, he said, should have spent Rs. 17 crores on watershed works in the district in the past five years. But few works have been taken up by gram panchayats so far, he added.

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