On the directions of Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat, the Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority (USDMA) has drawn a detailed programme under Vision 2020 to train Mahila and Yuvak Mangal Dals in disaster management, search and rescue through registered social organisations in the State.
The training period for the members of the Mahila Mangal Dal will be five days and for the programmes held at school levels the training period will be one day.
The disaster management secretary, Amit Singh Negi informed that the State faces varied disaster scenarios due to difficult geographical terrain and in most cases the rescue and relief work is done by the local people but due to lack of trained people and absence of the search and rescue tools, the efforts do not bear fruits. Considering this, USDMA under Vision 2020 has drawn a framework for providing training to the Mahila and Yuvak Mangal Dals in the state.
As directed by the CM, the District Disaster Management Department through registered social bodies will impart training at block level to Yuvak and Mahila Mangal Dals. A two-day orientation programme for the resource persons of the selected social organisations will be carried out by the disaster management department and a report would be sought on completion of the course and the data collected will be uploaded by the department on it’s official website.
The administrative tasks and evaluation of the work will be done by district and state level coordination committees. A three-tier committee under the chairmanship of the block development officer has been constituted for additional training programme. The State Coordinating Committee meeting will be held on a quarterly basis to review the feedback and progress of the programmes, while the district level coordination committee meeting will be held each month. It is pertinent to mention here that USDMA has so far trained 15,300 people in search, rescue and primary medical aid in 612 Nyay Panchayats. The government has focused prominently on the participation of local representatives in the programme under which the assistance has been sought form MlA’s, Block Pramukhs and Gram Pradhans. For this, the Gram Pradhans have been asked to purchase search lights, first aid kits, ropes and other search and rescue equipment with the money received form state finance commission while the cost for such training programmes and capacity building will be borne through the State Disaster Response Fund.