The State Government has sanctioned Rs1,700 crore out of Rs7,342 crore, which was approved by the Cabinet Committee for Uttarakhand, for rehabilitation work,including road construction, drinking water, irrigation, tourism and housing.
This was disclosed in a meeting of high power committee, which was constituted for disaster management, led by Chief Secretary Subhash Kumar on Wednesday, in which an amount of Rs500 crore to PWD, Rs 250 crore to drinking water, Rs556 crore to irrigation, Rs26 crore to tourism development & Rs60 crore for development of houses have already been released.
An amount of Rs108 crore tender has been finalized for road construction. The reconstruction work will begin within one week. Fifteen bailey bridges have been prepared for sudden requirement. Irrigation department has been working on 52 out of 74 flood safety projects and Rs556 crore allocated by the State.
Huts will be developed in the routes of tourism department. Kedarnath town will be redeveloped. Rs26 crore have been sanctioned for this. Besides this, Rs350 crore has been sanctioned for Special Plan Assistance. The tourism department will develop Char Dham area with a budget of Rs200 crore. Drinking water arrangement will be made in 9 cities from a budget of Rs70 crore. Work will start in 3 cities from an amount of Rs 10 crore. The work on the remaining projects will begin by 20th April. Drinking water services have been resumed from Kedarnath to Bheembali. Sixty including 20 small Helipads are also being constructed and four different sizes including 10,000 sq mt, 6000, 2500 and 900 sq mt. For this Rs120 crore have been allocated. Besides this, all helipads will have a multipurpose hall with Rs30 crore budgets.
All houses which were damaged during the disaster will be repaired. Out of 2475 repaired houses, work has begun on 404 houses. 4 designs have been prepared for these houses. These houses are being repaired according to the wishes of the owner. GSI has already conducted a survey on these. Insurances of these houses have already been done.
Similarly, reconstruction work of hospitals, schools, godowns, polytechnics, ITIs and government buildings has already begun. Rs200 crore has been allotted for technical assistance. Under this arrangement, strategieswill be made for risk management, slope stabilization study, river morphology study, formation of SDMA, strengthening of emergency response system and early warning system.
A strong system is being made for effective implementation of these projects. Project management unit has also been constituted. Secretary PWD Amit Negi is the head of this. Additional secretary, PWD, Dilip Jawalkar is the project manager for road and bride development unit..
Also present in the meeting were additional Chief Secretary Rakesh Sharma, Principal Secretary MH Khan, Ranveer Singh, Secretary Bhaskaranand, Umakant Panwar, Manisha Panwar, DS Gabryal, Additional Secretary Nitesh Jha, Sachin Kurve, Dilip Jawalkar and Shailesh Bagoli amongst other officials.