DCs empowered with more funds to provide CGI sheets to affected houses
Shillong, Mar 11: The state government has taken multiple measures, including adoption of weather forecasting mechanism equipped with satellite imagery technology, to warn about floods caused by heavy rains in the state.
Informing this in the state assembly on Tuesday, chief minister Conrad K Sangma said, “The government is working on a weather forecasting mechanism combined with new technologies to predict any major flash flood or cloud burst.”
Multiple steps have been taken by different departments, including, Water Resources, Soil & Water Conservation, Forest, in different areas to mitigate floods, he said.
“However, these are not hundred per cent full-proof measures as weather these days are quite unpredictable,” he said.
“With advanced technology, we are in a position now to have some kind of weather warnings in most of the situations that we faced,” he said.
Further, the chief minister informed that Disaster Response Fund was Rs 322 crore and Disaster Mitigation Fund was Rs 81 crore in the past five years.
“During last year alone, the government had spent Rs 71 crore of Rs 322 crore DRF for the disaster affected areas.”
Stating that funds (to mitigate floods) are made available at district level too, Sangma said, “We have amended the rules to allow the DCs to provide housing materials for the affected households and additional funds are placed with the DCs.”
The amendment was brought as “people require immediate help for housing and by the time the help would come, the sanction would take place, it would be six months to one year.”
Besides general relief (GR) funds already available with DCs, additional Rs 25 lakh has been provided to DCs to provide CGI sheets to affected households without taking prior approval from the government.
“Sufficient funds are available at any given time with the DC to take immediate and appropriate action,” he stated.
Earlier, in his reply, minister in-charge Revenue & Disaster Management Kyrmen Shylla said 28 households were affected under Dadenggre block during the flood last year.
According to him, immediate relief materials were provided to the affected households.
