Karwar: “A few taluks in Uttara Kannada district are not getting pure drinking water. People are left with no option but to drink the poisonous water. This is election time and we are politicians. We are directly answerable to the problems of people”, said Union Minister Ananthkumar Hegde during the District Development Coordination & Monitoring. Committee (Disha) meeting held at the deputy commissioner’s office in Karwar recently.

Reviewing the progress of the Rural Drinking Water & Sanitation Department, the minister compared the figures and progress with the one recorded during the previous meeting. He said that water in some villages in Mundgod taluk had fluoride content and the issue was discussed during the previous meeting. He asked the officers what alternative arrangement they had done for the people. Responding to this, the officers said that Rs 25 lakh had been approved by the Task Force then and so, borewells would be sunk. Listening to this, the minister said that such solutions won’t help. “Use silver particle technology. This will help in reducing the fluoride content. The quality of water must be checked at least two times a year”, Hegde said.

Officers of the Industrial Department said that Simhashakthi Federation had come forward to set up a unit for vegetable dehydration in Sirsi at a cost of Rs seven crore. The State government had given approval for that and the proposal had been sent to the Union government for approval. The minister said that it was better if the unit was set up in Gokarna or tail-end villages of Mundgod taluk instead of Sirsi as vegetables were largely grown in those areas. He directed the chief executive officer of the zilla panchayat Roshan to review this suggestion.

Joint Director of Agriculture Honnappa Gowda informed that they had sent a proposal to the department urging it to provide five machines to peel peanuts. He said that more than Rs 49 crore had been distributed under Fasal Bima Yojana.

Uniform issue

Deputy Director of Public Instruction Department N G Naik and C S Naik told the meeting that the government school students had still not got the second set of uniforms. Taking note of this, MLA Roopali Naik expressed disappointment and asked how children could manage with just one set of uniform. Responding to this, Minister Ananthkumar Hegde said that uniforms can be made compulsory for only one or two days a week so that the children could wear civil clothes on other days. “Do not trouble the children. You can take a better decision in this regard”, Hegde told officers.

Deputy Commissioner S S Nakul, Zilla Panchayat President Jayashri Moger and others were present at the meeting.