Seeking a team from the Planning Commission of India for assessing the losses due to floods, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Saturday said the central team could also suggest measures to avert such natural tragedies in future.
Talking to the media persons after visiting nine flood affected villages of Sri Muktsar Sahib district on the last leg of his four-day tour in flooded parts of State, the Chief Minister said the disaster caused by the floods was a national disaster and it was the responsibility of entire nation to bail the people out in this hour of crisis.
Badal said the Centre must dispatch a high-level team of Planning Commission to tour the flood ravaged regions and suggest about the precautionary measures to avoid such situation in the future. He said he would soon take up this matter with the top brass of the PCI so that a timely action could be taken on the issue.
The Chief Minister said that his Government would also raise the issue of enhancing the amount of relief to the flood victims with the Finance Commission of India, to assure adequate compensation to the flood victims. He pointed out that the relief given to the flood victims was too inadequate to help them in this critical situation so the need of the hour was to revise it rationally so that the losses of the people could be minimised.
Badal said the Government would take every possible step to ensure that maximum compensation was awarded to the farmers and the people so that a helping hand could be extended to them. The State Government had already ordered to defer the recovery of crop loans of the Co-operative societies thereby converting the short term crop loans of farmers into medium term crop loans in order to ease out pressure of repayment on them.
Badal said he had even asked the officers to recover the loans in easy installments to relieve the farmers of enormous financial burden on account of repayment. Replying to another query, the Chief Minister said that there was no plan of the Government to mortgage the property of the State for fetching the funds to manage its day-to-day affairs.
He said the financial position of the State was sound enough to meet its fiscal obligations and the malicious propaganda made by the Congress regarding it was ‘farce’. During his interaction with the victims of the flood affected areas, he assured that no stone would be left unturned by the State Government to help them in this peculiar situation.