A farmer standing by the channel of the Uthukkadu irrigation tank, which is clogged with buses and brambles, making it too narrow for proper water flow
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
A section of farmers of Uthukkadu village in Walajahbad taluk in neighbouring Kancheepuram district have not been able to take up agricultural operations this year due to lack of water. The reason is the clogging of a channel leading from the Uthukkadu irrigation tank.
“The channel has bushes and brambles growing all over it and has become silted up too. The original depth was 12 feet and its width was 6 feet, but it has now reduced to just a 2 feet wide and 3 feet deep channel. It used to run to a length of about 4 km; however it runs only for about 2-3 km now as the remaining portion is silted,” said Tamilselvan, a farmer.
Another farmer, M. Sivapprakash, said that last year he had suffered losses due to lack of water. “I had planted groundnuts, and without water you cannot harvest the crop. Since I did not get water on time, a portion of the crop went to waste. Then I had to purchase water from a farmer who had a pumpset. This year I have only planted some paddy in one section of my land,” he said.
Farmers in the area usually pitch in to desilt the channel. However, since they have been running at losses this past year, they do not have the ₹25,000 required to desilt one km of the channel. “We asked if the MGNREGA workers could help us with the desilting, but nothing has happened so far. The irrigation tank’s locks are broken and need to be repaired,” said another farmer in the area.
District Collector Kalaiselvi Mohan said that she would direct the panchayat officials to inspect the channel and see if it could be desilted.