Kerala sits on disaster plans

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Though regularly scorched by drought and ravaged by floods, the state has not bothered to put in place the fundamental mechanisms to tackle natural disasters of such scale. Even the most basic requirement, setting up village disaster management committees (VDMCs), has not been done. There are emergency operations centres at the state and district level, but are in a moribund state. “The state acts only after the disaster strikes,” said principal accountant general Amar Patnaik said. “It is high time they begin pre-disaster preparations like prevention and mitigation,” he added.

The latest CAG audit revealed that VDMCs were not set up in any of the 245 village offices test-checked in Alappuzha, Kottayam, Palakkad and Thiruvananthapuram districts. Result: village disaster management plans, which would have taken care of the training needs of the community, were not prepared. However, village officers questioned by the auditors said that VDMCs were not constituted because they were not instructed to do so. Far worse is the state of emergency operating centres (EOCs), the nerve centres of disaster preparedness dealing with planning, early warning, emergency management, recovery management and mitigation planning. EOCs, according to Disaster Management Act, should function round the clock. “But the state EOC and the two district EOCs that were checked were not functioning round the clock,” the report said.

VHF radio communication systems to be used as Early Warning Systems (EWS) at the time of disaster when normal communications fail, were not functioning in the two DEOCs. (Of the 70 VHF systems installed in various locations in Alappuzha, Kottayam and Palakkad districts, 58 systems were not functioning.) Further, High Frequency Ham radio set, radio receiver and portable generator were not available. What’s more, the toll-free number 1077 was not functioning and accessible to all consumers. The CAG also questioned the government’s tendency to pick schools as disaster relief centres. “The use of premises of educational institutions for setting up of relief camps needs to be discouraged,” the report said. “District disaster management authorities had failed to identify locations other than educational institutions for relief camps as suggested in the National Policy,” it added.