Villagers from KK Nagar near here thronged the Collectorate here on Monday, carrying water bottles of sewage-mixed drinking water and urged the district administration to ensure supply of potable drinking water after setting right pipelines and cleaning overhead water tanks.

Led by E. Kannagi, district secretary, All India Democratic Women Association (AIDWA), and S. Jayalakshmi, taluk secretary, the villagers, mostly women, staged a protest. They said there were two overhead water tanks in their village — one to store water drawn from a well in nearby Kalathavur village and another to store water distributed under the Integrated Cauvery Water Supply Scheme. Sewage water which was let into the open by some of the residents got mixed with the drinking water through damaged pipelines, they said.

They had been enduring this problem for the past one-and-a-half years and repeated complaints to the panchayat president were in vain, Ms. Jayalakshmi said. One of the overhead tanks was built 28 years ago and it was not cleaned for the past several years, she said.

The pipelines were also damaged but the authorities never bothered to replace them, she said. While most of the villagers bought drinking water supplied through tankers by paying Rs. 5 per pot, the local panchayat primary school used the polluted water for preparing noon meal, she said.

As the local body had failed to take action, the villagers sought the intervention of the Collector. They appealed to the Collector to make immediate arrangements for cleaning the overhead tanks and repair the damaged pipelines.