The State Government on Tuesday got a pat on its back from the National Human Rights Commission (Investigation) director Kanwaljit Deol who lauded it (State Government) for the rescue and relief operation carried out after the natural calamity that hit the State last month. She along with the team of NHRC held a meeting with the Chief Secretary Subhash Kumar.
State officials apprised the team of the kind of havoc disaster wreaked in some districts of the state. Though the disaster affected all 13 districts, it literally caused devastation in Rudraprayag, Chamoli, Uttarkashi, Pithoragarh and Bageshwar. The officials said that as per initial estimation 59 villages were washed away. Giving account of loss of buildings, the officials said that 93 houses were collapsed followed by partial damage to 2,319 houses.
In the catastrophe, 686 big animals and 8,833 small cattle were washed away. The officials claimed to have set up 1,516,29 relief camps across the State. Food grains, including around 6920 metric tonnes of wheat, 7,570 metric tonnes rice 889 metric tonnes sugar, 994 kilo litres of kerosene and other commodities were made available in the disaster affected areas.
State government will provide Rs 2,000 as monthly rent to the people lost their homes in the calamity. The amount would be paid by next six months. The Government has already identified 233 villages for rehabilitation. Blankets, sleeping bags, tent and clothes were distributed among the affected people as an immediate relief.
The officials claimed to have prepared a detailed rehabilitation policy and increased relief amount. Additional work of 150 days would be provided under MNREGA. Farmers are being given Rs 5,000 per hectare for silt lifting from non-irrigated fields followed by Rs 8,000 per hectare for irrigated fields.
The officials claimed to have taken all preventive measures to check outbreak of any epidemic. As part of 51 tons of bleaching powder and 16 lakh pills of chlorine have already been sent to the affected areas. They also claimed that there was no information about any epidemic from any part of the affected regions.
The officials also claimed to have set up six water purifier of 2,000 litres per hour capacity followed by deployment of 313 doctors, 43 teams of paramedical, including 4,977 members. It was also claimed in the meeting that 1,299, out of 1,987 affected water systems, were restored. Work to restore functioning of the rest, is in progress.
The officials also apprised the team of setting up 53 temporary outposts for the security of the passengers. There is no information about any human trafficking from any disaster affected areas. Disaster damaged 2,070 routes in the state, of them 1,665 were opened temporarily for the traffic. Work is in progress for repairing rest of the roads where 5,800 labourers and 385 dozers have been pressed to carry out repairing. Out of 3,758 villages, where power supply was interrupted, the same has been restored to 3,669 villages. The disaster also affected 11 small, 41 micro and 3 big hydropower projects. Of these, 26 micro projects have been completely restored followed by one big partially.
DGP Satyavrata, FRDC BP Pandey, Principal Secretary (Home) Omprakash and several other officials attended the meeting.