Equip people with disaster management skills, says ZP CEO

UDUPI: MARCH
14, 2014 DHNS
Zilla Panchayat CEO Kanagavalli
has said that the concept of
disaster management has gained
momentum in the aftermath of
tsunami that hit Indian east coast
in 2004.
Speaking after inaugurating the
two-day workshop on 'automation
of Udupi district disaster
management plan' on Wednesday,
the CEO felt the need for
systematic management plan for
checking disaster.
She said humanbeings should
efficiently manage and get
equipped with the skills of
disaster management and should
work on war footing. Karnataka is
in a safer zone unlike the states on
east coast, that are prone to
natural disasters very often. Udupi
has been selected in the second
phase of the project by the centre
to implement disaster
management.
Disaster management
Course coordinator R Dharmaraju
said the project covers the entire
state of Karnataka by December
2014 and is taken up for four
years. The plan is revised every
year for the effective
accomplishment. However, the
major obstacle for carrying out the
plans as per the design is the lack
of coordination between the
officials of different departments,
he pointed. The automation of
disaster management enables the
software development, which
demands for the exclusive
information of resource persons
that are available at village and
local level.
The information is updated
following the changes in the data.
A mobile device is made available
for each village and training is
offered to six individuals. The
trained persons should pass on
the information to the server
through the mobile device,
following the disaster.
The server will design the action
plan to connect the local resource
persons, who can help to mitigate
the damages and for effective
measures of disaster management,
he explained.
Dharmaraju said that Raichur
district was taken up as a pilot
project and the plans were
implemented there successfully.
The project is introduced in 10
districts and Udupi is the 11th
district, he added.
Mangalore
The automation of disaster
management is important specially
because the officers who are
responsible to manage the
disasterous situations face
difficulty in finding the things in
place, said Deputy Commissioner
A B Ibrahim.
He was speaking after inaugurating
a workshop on 'Automation of
Dakshina Kannada District Disaster
Management Plan,' jointly
organised by the Administrative
Training Institute, Mysore and the
district administration at Zilla
Panchayat hall. The DC said that
the Indian government has
introduced the Disaster
Management Act, 2005 with an
intention to get the officials
concerned ready to meet the
situations.
ZP Chief Executive Officer Tulasi
Maddineni who was present at the
programme, cited the examples of
fire disaster in a school in Tamil
Nadu and emphasised the need to
make preparatory arrangements to
face any kind of disaster.
Addressing the participants, ATI
Faculty R Dharmaraju said that
Dakshina Kannada is the 11th
district in the State where the
workshop is organised.
Accordingly, the places which are
prone to disaster in every district
will be identified and uploaded in
the server and transferred to the
website.
GPS and SMS will play a major role
in the automated disaster
management plan, he said.