Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal has asked the Revenue and Disaster Management (R&DM) Department to come up with innovative steps like constructing high-rise structures to give succour to the people who suffer from perennial flood in the State every year.
Reviewing the second wave of flood that six districts of the State are reeling through at the conference room of his office in Janata Bhawan on Friday evening, Chief Minister Sonowal said that capacity should be built through permanent strictures to save the people of the State from the perennial flood in the State.
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He said that the Revenue and Disaster Management Department should come up with ideas to strengthen the infrastructure to mitigate the sufferings of the people caused by the floods.
Chief Minister Sonowal asked the Revenue and Disaster Management Department to come up with model estimate to construct high-rise structures in the flood prone areas.
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The high-rise structure will be a multi-purpose building which can be used as safe shelter during flood. During non-flood season, the building can be used for socio-cultural functions and other community related activities. He also asked the department to prepare model estimate for converting the dykes as road cum embankments to lend capacity building as well as economic prosperity of the rural areas.
It may be noted that from June 13 to August 3, Assam has had two waves of flood affecting 163 villages and 10.99 lakh people.
Sonowal asked the Revenue and Disaster Management Department to ensure that the district administrations in the affected districts should remain on their toes to reach out to the flood affected people and expedite rescue and relief work. Altogether 388 relief camps have been set up and 440 relief distribution centres have been opened to distribute relief items to the flood affected people.
Chief Minister Sonowal said that the SDRF personnel should be provided with modern gadgets and two battalions would be raised to pan out the services of SDRF battalions in all the affected areas of the state.
This year, a total of 41 deaths have already been reported and Chief Minister Sonowal directed ex-gratia amount to be handed over to the next of the kin of the decease within 48 hours.
Sonowal also asked Revenue and Disaster Management Department to develop inter-departmental synergy and together with Agriculture Department to carry out district mapping and segregate 27 lakh farmers of the state into three categories and train them for three types of cropping depending on intensity of flood that affect several parts of the state during monsoon.
The CM also directed the Revenue and Disaster Management Department to maintain a close vigil on 24X7 basis and assess flood data to face any kind of exigency at any given point in time.
Minister of State Irrigation, Revenue and Disaster Management Bhabesh Kalita, Principal Secretary, Finance, Samir Sinha, Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister Sanjay Lohiya, Commissioner and Secretary to Revenue and Disaster Management Rajesh Prasad, ADGP Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta, PWD Commissioner R Kemprai, Commissioner and Secretary Agriculture Amlan Baruah and a host of other Government senior officers were present at the meeting.