Fifty-year-old Mariyamma walks about half a kilometre every day carrying a 10-litre steel pot of water from a nearby well to her house. She makes 20 such trips a day, 10 in the morning and 10 in the evening, walking almost ten kilometres daily since she got married 25 years ago.
Despite the arduous task, Mariyamma, belonging to an SC community in Kanukollu village of Mandavalli mandal in Eluru district, does not complain. “There are others who walk for more than a kilometre to fetch drinking water,” she says.
From the time borewells started yielding saline water three decades ago, everyone in the village turned to wells for drinking water. “While water in four out of seven wells has become undrinkable, thanks to the rampant aquaculture activities, the remaining three also face the threat of salinisation,” she adds.
