National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has asked Punjab Government to focus on preventive steps besides preparedness and response to meet any eventuality in case of any kind of disaster.
NDMA has also underlined the need for strict adherence to National Building Code as it was found that unsafe buildings inflicted more causalities in case of an earthquake.
These observations were made by NDMA member Kamal Kishore on Thursday while reviewing the preparation status of State Disaster Management Plan (SDMP) and District Disaster Management Plan (DDMP).
He said that the management of any disaster was not only Government's job, everybody has to play a role in creating awareness besides having training to meet any kind of disaster thereby mitigating the sufferings of victims.
Earlier, the State's Revenue secretary-cum-Disaster Management director Samir Kumar said that the SDMP has already been sent to NDMA after approval of State Executive Committee and to tackle disaster at the micro level as many as 22 DDMPs have been prepared.
He said that Punjab was mainly confronted with threat perceptions of floods, water logging, drought, desertification, soil erosion, earthquake, cancer, road and rail accident, hailstorm, gale, lightening squall, thunderstorm, heat or cold wave, fire, terrorist activities, war, and soil, water, or air pollution.
Underlining the need for sufficient trained manpower for effective disaster response, Kumar informed that the State has till date trained 1.30 lakh students and 65,000 villagers.
Demanding funds to the tune of Rs 25 crore, he said that these were required for flood control or earthquakes, health related equipments or medicines stock, irrigation department equipments like boats, fire tenders, building jack equipment, national school safety programme, disaster risk reduction strategies, hazard risk vulnerability, resource mapping and data collection inventories.
He informed that the State Government has decided to set up five Regional Emergency Operation Centers at Amritsar, ludhiana, Bathinda, Ferozepur and Jalandhar equipped with sophisticated equipment loaded in ready to move special trucks, jeeps and motorcycles to deal with different type of disasters including road accidents.