Home secretary asks state govt not to take IMD warnings lightly

A screen grab of IMD website.

New Delhi: The Union home secretary on Saturday exhorted all state governments to not take warnings, whether big or small, issued by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) lightly.

He also asked states to identify disaster vulnerable areas and take up long term projects to create necessary infrastructure to tackle disasters.

“Every warning issued by the India Meteorological Department must be taken seriously whether it is big or small ... Every state must identify disaster vulnerable areas and take up projects on long term projects to address the concerns ... it should be done as these (issues) tends to be ignored,” said L.C. Goyal on Saturday.

He was speaking while inaugurating the annual conference of relief commissioners and secretaries of the department of disaster management of states government and administrations of union territories to review the status of preparedness for southwest monsoon 2015.

He urged for building capacities of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and SDRFs to effectively tackle natural and man-made disasters. Goyal also observed that civil society including NGOs play a critical role in disaster management.

Stating that the primary responsibility of disaster management rests with the state authorities, Goyal noted that only 21 States have constituted SDRFs (State Disaster Response Force). He said that he expects other states to set up SDRFs in a given timeframe and asked them to use funds given to them by the 14th Finance Commission for this purpose.

K.K. Pathak, joint secretary in the union home ministry, asked states to appoint permanent personnel rather than drawing personnel from fire or police services on an ad-hoc basis.

Meanwhile, highlighting that nearly 80% of damage caused by disasters in India is due to flooding of rivers, Goyal said the problem cannot be tackled without periodic dredging.

National Disaster Management Authority’s member secretary R.K. Jain, who also attended the meeting, echoed with Goyal’s views. “Though we are now able to save more human lives due to floods, still more attention needs to be paid to minimizing loss to livelihood including livestock,” Jain added.

The home secretary further called for organising the conference twice a year compared to present practice of having it once a year only so that all work done carried out for disaster management can be reviewed.

Apart from relief commissioners and secretaries of department of disaster management of States, the meeting was also attended by top officials of the NDMA, IMD, ISRO, CWC, GSI, NIC, NDRF, NIDM and UNDP participated in the daylong conference.