WATER WORLD: A woman going up the ladder with a water pitcher to reach her pucca house constructed at an elevated place in Pragathi Colony at Ongole.

ONGOLE: As the low-lying Pragathi colony in Ongole is inundated due to heavy rain on Friday last, some 150 families are literally living in water for the last five days braving difficulties.

All the roads are submerged in three feet of water. As water entered the thatched houses, people are forced to cook, eat and sleep in their waterlogged houses.

No respite

Municipal officials are baling out water using pump-sets. As the water is pumped out, fresh water from upstream areas like Nagarjuna Sagar colony, Housing Board colony is flowing into Pragathi colony. There seems to be no respite for the inhabitants for the next five or six days.

Poor people encroached upon the prime land abutting four-lane Chennai-Kolkata National Highway on the south bypass road near Ongole ago to construct thatched houses 10 years ago. The 10-acre land belongs to District Cooperative Marketing Society. As there was no heavy rain for the last few years, the residents did not face many problems initially. They were provided power connection following poll promise of Ongole MLA, Balineni Sreenivasa Reddy, in 1999 election.

He won the election in 2004 by promising them house-site pattas for the encroached land.

But as heavy rain lashed the district in September and October, the colony was inundated and the inhabitants had to vacate their houses and take shelter in relief camps for 40 days.

The municipality blame the highway officials for not providing proper drainage facility to discharge either sewage water or storm water. So the low-lying colony is inundated frequently and for long durations.

Demands

The residents demand house-site pattas, levelling of the ground and construction of pucca houses for them. But Municipal Chairman Bapatla Hanumantha Rao argues that it would be a costly proposition for the municipality. He instead feels relocation of the colony is a better solution to save the people from recurring problem of flooding.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail