Bhubaneswar: Odisha government is preparing a memorandum seeking Rs 20,000 crore cyclone assistance from the Centre.
The State addition chief secretary and special relief commissioner (SRC), Pradip Kumar Jena, said that the memorandum, which would be submitted to Cectre next week, will seek Rs 20,000 crore to build cyclone resilience infrastructures.
Meanshile, the seven member Central Team led by Sri Prakash applauded the preparedness, response and disaster management skill of Odisha in their meeting with Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy and other senior officers in the Lokseva Bhawan conference hall, here on Friday. The members of team mentioned that pre-positioning of manpower and machines in vulnerable pockets, timely evacuation of people from low laying areas and kuccha houses, preventive preparedness and community involvement are the achievements of Odisha.
“We have seen in remote areas that even electricity could be restored within 24 to 72 hours”, said Sri Prakash.
Chief secretary Tripathy said, “Due to geo-climatic location of Odisha and climate change impacts, cyclones are going to be regular feature in summer, monsoon and post-monsoon months. So we request government of India to support us for building cyclone resilient infrastructure than that of spending huge amount each year towards immediate restoration and rehabilitation”.
Additional chief secretary and SRC Jena emphasized on laying of underground cable in urban areas, resilient power transmission and distribution infrastructure in rural areas, building remote control GIS grid, raising height of the saline embankments at least up to 6.5 mts above the sea level and converting 1.66 lakh kaccha houses to cyclone resilient pucca houses.
Jena appraised that preliminary estimate of around Rs.20,000 crore has been made for these resilient infrastructure building and immediate restoration of the damage caused by the cyclone Amphan. Jena added, “Resilient infrastructure building is thrust of our memorandum”.
Chief secretary Tripathy said that the final memorandum would be sent within the next week.
Development Commissioner Suresh Chandra Mohapatra along with principal secretaries and secretaries of different departments participated in the discussions.
The team visited the ditrsicts of Balasorem Bhadrakh, Jagatsinghpur and Kendrapara in two different teams. The Team leader Sri Prkash said they would submit the report to Government of India soon with excellent suggestions of the State Government for resilient infra building.
