PREVENTION OF LOSSES FROM NATURAL DISASTERS

PREVENTION OF LOSSES FROM NATURAL DISASTERS

The primary responsibility for disaster management rests with the State Governments concerned. The Central Government supplements the efforts of the State Governments and provides requisite logistics and financial support.  There are well established institutional mechanisms at the National, State &  District  levels  in  the  country for taking appropriate preparedness, mitigation and prompt response measures for effective management of natural disasters.

The Central Government has taken several initiatives to ensure effective mitigation measures in the country to reduce risks during disasters by strengthening the disaster risk reduction system in India.  In this direction, important initiatives taken and important projects approved by Central Government are as under: –

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CAP platform has been used to disseminate alerts by State Governments / UT administration. This system has been successfully used in recent disasters. More than 6400 crore SMS alerts have been disseminated so far using CAP.

 

Awareness Generation and Capacity Building component are one of the major components of such mitigation programmes. Under National Landslide Risk Mitigation Project, there is a sub-component titled “Sensitization Programmes for communities and the Panchayat Raj Institution members including creation of a village task force in landslide-prone areas” for which Rs. 14 crore is allocated.  Under Mitigation Scheme for Forest Fire Risk Management, Rs. 22 crore is allocated for equipping village panchayats with basic equipment and fire-fighting skills in 144 identified districts of 19 States.  Under Mitigation Project on Lightning Safety, there is a sub-component for Master Training Programme for Gram Panchayat, members of Task force of Gram Panchayat and village for which Rs. 1.5 crore is allocated. Similarly, capacity building at local level is one of the components of Catalytic assistance for twelve (12) drought prone States programme.  For the State of Rajasthan, an amount of Rs. 2.00 crore is allocated for farmers’ training and awareness on drought proofing of the agriculture sectors.

This was stated by the Minister of State in the Ministry of Home Affairs Shri Nityanand Rai in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha.