Chief Secretary GC Pati on Wednesday asked all district administrations and departments to prepare their Disaster Management Plans for 2015-16 and update the same in their respective websites by May 31, 2015. The Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA) was asked to update the State Disaster Management Plan accordingly.
The Chief Secretary issued these directives while presiding over the State Executive Committee Meeting at the Secretariat here. Special Relief Commissioner PK Mohapatra presented the updates and outlined issues for discussion. Chief Secretary also directed that the State and district level Emergency Operation Centers be equipped with emergency operation equipment by June-end.
As many as 19 tools, including workstations, VoIP phones, EPABX, satellite phones, video conferencing systems, TV multichannel monitoring systems, fed from news agencies, VSAT for NIC hub and NDRF integration, lAN cables, online UPS systems, handicam, HF radio sets for HAM DSPT, smart phones, radiation dictation equipment, software define radio and decision support system, are to be put in these centres
The OSDMA was also asked to make training assessments of various departments and design capacity building activities accordingly. It was asked to prepare capacity building plans and budget requirement and put the same to the SRC for fund provisions.
It was revealed that the SDRF would henceforth provide assistances to families of victims of lightning, heatwave, whirlwind, tornado, heavy rains, drowning, and boat accident in normal times and snakebite in normal times. These assistances will be met from the SDRF as per 14th Finance Commission recommendations.
It may be noted that victims of these disasters are now being assisted from the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund (CMRF). The State had been demanding for their inclusion under the SDRF. A total amount of Rs4,130 crore has been proposed as SDRF corpus for five years from 2015 to 2020 as per 14th Finance Commission recommendations. The corpus for 2015-16 is set at Rs747 crore in the Centre and State share of 75 per cent and 25 per cent respectively.