HYDRAA చేసీ Demolitions మాత్రమే సరిపోదు ..lakes Maintenence కూడా చెయ్యండి అంటున్న Lake activists

[andhra_jp]

Lubna Sarwath, a veteran lake activist with over 20 years of experience, describes HYDRAA’s operations as a ‘nano step’ toward restoring the city’s lakes. Unless the lake hydrology is restored and sewage is stopped from entering the lakes, and unless the lakes are cleared of all debris, demolitions alone will not bring about any change, she argues. Sarwath also questions lack of criminal action against public representatives who are proven violators, and why a mosque within the FTL of Bam Rukn Ud-Dowlah is left untouched.

On the second day after HYDRAA’s operation, the N-Convention at Thammidi Kunta lake presents a stark scene. Expensive air conditioning units and firefighting equipment lie amid a heap of broken fabrication sheets, while empty plastic bottles are scattered across the lawns — remnants of the events held there the day before demolition.

The air is filled with the hum of an earthmover, which is deployed for removing water hyacinth that has claimed more than half of the lake’s surface.

“A batch of labourers who had worked on the weed two days earlier have fallen sick due to the murky water and mosquitoes. A machine can remove the weed from the edges alone, not from the centre,” says Obul Reddy, the contractor.

Ironically, the N-Convention management provided tea and lunch for the labourers while they worked on the lake.

Reddy has cleared water hyacinth from six lakes in the Serilingampally zone, but the weed has regrown in three of them within two months. “Unless sewage flowing into the lake is arrested, the weed will keep surfacing,” he says.