NEW DELHI: Lieutenant-Governor Taranjit Singh Sandhu, along with Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, reviewed the rollout of the heat wave action plan and the further course of action in this regard during a meeting of the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA).
The L-G emphasised that the massive heat-relief effort must continue as a fully coordinated operation involving the Revenue Department, Transport Department and DTC, DDA, Labour Department, and other agencies.
The L-G made it clear that citizens are only interested in seeing actual work happening on the ground and do not care about jurisdictional divides between different departments or authorities.
According to an official statement, he directed all agencies to work seamlessly as a single team with the sole objective of serving the public and delivering immediate relief.
The meeting was attended by ministers Ashish Sood and Parvesh Verma, apart from the Chief Secretary, Commissioner of Police, MCD Commissioner, NDMC Chairperson, Vice-Chairman of DDA, and heads of all concerned departments.
It was underlined that, following the Prime Minister’s call last year, Delhi had for the first time deployed a substantial and coordinated heat-relief plan spanning multiple departments to protect citizens across all 13 districts.
The L-G, as well as the CM, pointed out that since Delhi has a massive population spread across 13 districts, having just one mobile relief van per district may not be enough.
He directed departments to focus heavily on scale and capacity building. The L-G also highlighted PM Narendra Modi’s direction to focus on long-term urban cooling measures to create lasting relief solutions for the capital and combat the “Urban Heat Island” effect.