GUWAHATI, Aug 3 - Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal has asked the revenue and disaster management departments to come up with innovative steps, like constructing high-rise structure to give succour to the people who suffer from perennial flood in the State every year.
Reviewing the second wave of flood that six districts of the State are reeling under, at the conference room of his office in Janata Bhawan this evening, Sonowal said that capacity should be built through permanent structures to save the people of the State from the perennial flood.
He said that the revenue and disaster management departments should come up with ideas to strengthen the infrastructure to mitigate the suffering of the people caused by the flood.
Sonowal asked the revenue and disaster management department to come up with model estimate to construct high-rise structure in the flood-prone areas. The high-rise structure will be a multi-purpose building which can be used as safe shelter during flood.
During non-flood season the building can be used for socio-cultural functions and other community activities. He also asked the departments to prepare model estimate for converting the dykes as road-cum-embankments to lend capacity building as well as economic prosperity of the rural areas.
It may be noted that from June 13 to August 3, Assam has had two waves of flood, affecting 163 villages and 10.99 lakh people. Sonowal asked revenue and disaster management departments to ensure that the affected district administrations remain on their toes to reach out to the flood-affected people and expedite rescue and relief work. Altogether 388 relief camps have been set up and 440 relief distribution centres have been opened to distribute relief items to the flood-affected people.
He also said that the SDRF personnel should be provided with modern gadgets and two battalions would be raised to pan out the services of SDRF battalions in all the affected areas of the State.
So far, 41 deaths have already been reported and Chief Minister Sonowal directed ex-gratia amount to be handed over to the next of the kin of the decease within 48 hours.
Sonowal also vouched for developing inter-departmental synergy and together with agriculture department to carry out district mapping and segregate 27 lakh farmers of the State into three categories and train them for three types of cropping depending on intensity of flood that affect several parts of the State during monsoon.
