A severe heatwave will most likely prevail in eight mandals of Visakhapatnam district and two mandals of Krishna district today, warned the AP State Development Planning Society. Yesterday, 13 mandals in the state had experienced severe heatwave with 125 mandals suffering from heatwave conditions.

So comparatively, the heatwave is likely to come down today with only 10 mandals likely to experience heatwave with 78 other mandals to experience heave wave conditions. Sullurpeta in Nellore district and Ballikuruva in Prakasam district recorded a temperature of 45.9 degrees Celsius, making it the highest in the state.

So a toll-free number has been set up to handle the woes of the people in the district. 1800-425-00002 has been set up and the same announced by Visakhapatnam Joint Collector G Srijana. While the district has not registered a single death this year due to heat strokes, 286 were left hospitalised due to the same.

The GVMC Commissioner M Hari Narayanan stated that all efforts are being made to keep the citizens safe from heat strokes. State Chief Secretary Dinesh Kumar has directed officials to speed up the summer action plans. The Joint Collector has informed the government that the repair work on borewells have been taken up since February 1 for 45 days under the Rural Water Supply special programme. 102 habitations were identified in the district where water supply was needed with special measures.

The flushing of 551 borewells and other open wells in the districts required Rs 183.71 lakh. Via NDRF grants, Rs 29.07 was already available and an amount of Rs 154.64 lakh has been requested from the government. The district will have a total of 605 water kiosks this summer, with the government setting up 170 of them, NGOs will be setting up 246 and 189 will be by others. There will also be 1045 shelters set up in the district to provide shade.