BHUBANESWAR: Two villages of Odisha have been designated as ‘Tsunami Ready’ for their preparedness by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Venkatraipur (Boxipalli) in Ganjam and Noliasahi in Jagatsinghpur district will receive the certificate of recognition in a virtual event on Friday. The Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA) implemented the ‘Tsunami Ready Programme’ in the two villages.
With this, Odisha has become the first State in the country and India, the first country, to implement the programme in the Indian Ocean region. Tsunami ready is a community performance-based programme initiated by UNESCO-Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) to promote preparedness through active collaboration of public, community leaders, national and local emergency management agencies.
Special Relief Commissioner (SRC) PK Jena said a lot of capacity building activities have been taken up in these two villages to make the communities ready to face the disaster. Besides, re-skilling has been taken up among the volunteers and existing shelters have been strengthened as per the protocols of UNESCO. The main objective of the programme is to improve coastal community preparedness for tsunami emergencies and minimise loss of life and property.
The National Board, after verification of the implementation of the indicators at these villages as per guidelines, decided to recognise them nationally and recommended to UNESCO-IOC. Based on the recommendations, UNESCO-IOC has approved recommendation of the two villages.