THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Local Self Government Department’s order to include a disaster management plan in the city corporation’s annual plan for 2020-21 has come as a bolt from the blue for the civic authorities. With only a few weeks left for the financial year to end, the civic authorities are on their toes to prepare the draft disaster management plan for all hundred wards.
The plan is to collect grassroots-level data on the possible disasters and the ones that had taken place in the past 10 years. People’s Plan coordinator, Thiruvananthapuram district, Subhash Chandran,said the ward-level resource group comprising around 25 members will go around and map the areas where flood or landslides had occurred. “A detailed data collection survey will be launched in all hundred wards. All vulnerable spots in the ward would be identified and information on all local resources would be provided for emergencies,” said Subhash.He said the emergency response team would be constituted locally for disaster preparedness. “Possible locations for rehabilitating the displaced would be identified during the process,” he added.
Local resource group
The civic body has constituted a 70-member Local Resource Group (LRG) at the corporation level which would have experts from various fields including climate change, soil and water conservation and disaster management. Town Planning Standing Committee chairman Palayam Rajan said that training for the officers is ongoing and a 20- to 25-member ward-level resource group has been formed.
“We will complete the draft plan before this financial year. The draft disaster management plan would be discussed in a development seminar. Upon finalisation, the draft plan would come up for council approval and later be submitted to the district-level disaster management authority,” said Palayam Rajan.
As part of the Rebuild Kerala Initiative (RKI), the state government has launched ‘Nammal Namukkayi’ campaign in the state which mandates all local bodies in the state to formulate a comprehensive disaster management plan in the wake of back-to-back floods.
Now the LSG has issued an order directing all local bodies to include the disaster management plan in their annual plan. There are 19 working groups in the corporation and one more working group which would focus on climate change and environment protection will be added.