The acute fund crunch that hit the multi-crore Polavaram project came to light during Minister for Major Irrigation Devineni Umamaheswara Rao’s visit on Friday.
Ramesh, Superintending Engineer of the Polavaram Project, in his power-point presentation at the review meeting, stated that only 4.60 per cent of the headworks were executed till November. The authorities spent Rs 186 crore on execution of these works, he added. The slow pace was mainly due to paucity of funds. The bills worth Rs1,288 crore were pending payment to the contracting agencies. The agencies said that they could not go ahead with the execution of project works without clearing the pending bills, Mr.Ramesh informed the minister.
Another major roadblock to the main dam works is resistance from seven tribal habitations facing submergence. Mr.Ramesh said the main dam works would not inch ahead without evacuating the inhabitants of these villages with an immediate priority.
Collector Bhaskar Katamneni said the administration required at least 2,000 crore to execute the relief and rehabilitation(R&R) package, which includes housing, compensation for lands and trees as per the latest rates, and evacuate them.
Joint Collector T.Baburao Naidu, entrusted with R&R implementation, said the district administration has acquired lands from the farmers during 2006-08 by paying Rs 1.4 lakh per acre basing on the prevailing land rates during that period. Now these farmers wanted additional compensation from the government in line with the latest land values ranging up to Rs 3.4 lakh per acre, he said.
The earth dam with only 1.12 per cent progress in its construction was hit hard due to the strong-resistance being put up by the local project victims, demanding a fair deal. The other components under the category of headworks which were badly affected by the protests are spillway, spill channel and approach channel and earth-cum-rock fill dam works.
The cost of Polavaram project, for which a foundation stone was laid by then Chief Minister Y.S.Rajasekhar Reddy, was escalated up to Rs 16,010 crore by 2010-11. Although the NDA government has accorded a national status for the project, no additional funds flowed from the Centre yet, saving a provision for an allocation of Rs 250 crore in the Union Budget-2014-15. However, the Centre and the State governments vowed to complete the project in four years.
