Eight disasters included under response fund

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government on Wednesday approved the inclusion of eight state-specific disasters under the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) to facilitate fund allocation to provide assistance to the victims of these calamities.

The state executive committee meeting on disaster management chaired by Chief Secretary G.C. Pati approved inclusion of lightning, heat wave, whirlwind, tornado, heavy rain, drowning, boat accident in normal times, snake bite in normal times under SDRF, said a statement.

It has been decided that funds for assistance will be acquired from SDRF as per the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission.

The state government till now was providing financial assistance from the Chief Minister's Relief Fund.

The state government had demanded from the Centre the inclusion of heat wave and lightning under SDRF as maximum deaths occurred due to them.

The committee has resolved to move the National Disaster Response Force for leveraging more funds under this head, added the statement.

The chief secretary asked all the district collectors and departments to prepare their Disaster Management Plan for 2015-16 by the end of May 2015.

Pati also emphasised on capacity building activities for mitigating the effects of various disasters and ordered the augmentation of such activities at both the community and departmental levels.

The Odisha State Disaster Management Authority has been declared the nodal agency for capacity building to face such disasters.

A sum of Rs.4,130 crore has been proposed as the SDRF corpus during 2015-2020 as per the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission against which the corpus for 2015-16 will be around Rs.747 crore, including 75 percent central and 25 percent state share, said the statement.