Assam gears up for annual floods with Rs 1,111 Cr SDRF budget & multi-agency plan
Relief camp planning, positioning of teams, and support from UNICEF aim to ensure effective, gender-responsive disaster response across districts.
A file image of people wading through inundated roads, somewhere in Assam. (AT Photo)
Guwahati, May 22: Armed with additional funds under the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF), the Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) has started preparations to mitigate the losses during floods and to provide relief to the flood affected people.
Official sources told The Assam Tribune that the SDRF budget for the current financial year is fixed at Rs 1,111.11 crore, which is more than the budget of the last financial year. During the last financial year, the SDRF budget was Rs 1,083 crore and the expenditure was Rs 664 crore. On the preparations to deal with floods, sources said that the process started in March. Sources revealed that on March 5, a detailed meeting was held involving the National Disaster Response
Force, State Disaster Response Force, Air Force, Army, Railways, Police, Airports Authority of India, Civil Defence, etc, was held to review preparedness for rescue operations during floods.
That was followed by a meeting on relief camp management, in which all concerned departments were involved. The issues like water supply, medical services, child development, etc, in the relief camps were also discussed in detail to ensure that problems do not occur in the management of the relief camps.
Giving details of the instructions given to the departments, sources said that they were directed to share the necessary directives, guidelines, decisions, etc, with their field level functionaries before May 1.
All the stakeholders conducted drills in the last part of April. National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams will be prepositioned at Cachar, Barpeta, Bongaigaon, Jorhat, Sonitpur, Sivasagar, and Dibrugarh. All revenue circles have been asked to constitute all women task force in model relief camps to ensure gender responsive relief camp management
UNICEF to support ASDMA will convene online and offline orientation of DDMAS and district level line departments to improve the understanding and use of guidance available.
The Women & Child Development Department will continue with ICDS services during flood by providing services in the relief camps. They will help DDMAs to carry out a need assessment of community kitchen to be set up in the relief camps. Health and Family Welfare Department will place ambulances at strategic places to cater to the requirement of the relief camps using Google maps.