Keeping in view the scarcity of drinking water in the peripheral circles of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), the corporation has decided to commence water supply by engaging additional 199 water tankers in order to cater to the drinking needs of the residents.

A few day ago, GHMC Commissioner M T Krishna Babu addressed a letter to the the water board chief J Syamala Rao, requesting him to arrange additional filling stations and permit filling of these water tankers at reservoir filling points to meet the water requirement for additional tankers. 

Rao, in turn, instructed Chief General Managers, General Managers  of peripheral areas to provide location of additional filling stations at reservoir points to enable the GHMC tankers to meet the requirement. He also instructed to provide SMART cards for GHMC tankers for water accountability.

General managers were also asked to submit details of existing hand borewells, functioning borewells, borewells proposed by GHMC as well as obtain details of any hiring of private borewells proposed.

In peripheral circles like Serilingampally, Kukaptaplly, Patencheruvu, Ramchandrapuram, Kapra, Rajendranagar, L B Nagar, Gaddianaram, Uppal, Malkajgiri, Quthbullapur and Alwal, there is no proper distribution network of pipelines and drinking water is provided by the respective municipal circles through borewells and tankers.

But due to scanty rainfall last year, a majority of power borewells and hand borewells have gone dry, well before start of the summer. Ground water levels also depleted alarmingly due to its increased exploitation.