Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Aug 28: Former minister and senior Congress leader Raman Bhalla today said that though one cannot avoid natural calamities but a right set of policies and practices can stop those natural calamities from turning into human disaster.
The losses of lives, livelihoods and infrastructure due to the floods after unusual rains reflect lacunas in disaster preparedness, disaster prevention and disaster mitigation policies. Although the rain is over, but we can see hundreds of villages are still affected by water. They do require food, clean drinking water, medicines to avoid the risk of outbreak of skin diseases, cholera and diarrhoea, feed and veterinary care for remaining livestock, shelter, etc. In the absence of local Government there is no room for local people’s say in emergency aid delivery and rehabilitation efforts.
Former Minister continued visiting rain affected areas along with other office bearers to take stock of the damages caused by floods. Today he toured Sanjay Nagar Ward 46 Sector 2. They reviewed loss to physical infrastructure, food, commodities and livestock. He said real challenge is to develop feasible alternatives to ensure an effective governance system which helps in stopping natural calamities from turning into a human disaster.
The 24-hour rainfall was enough to bring low-lying areas in Jammu to their knees. People complained that authorities have failed to learn the lessons from the 2014 floods. Residents of many areas said that they have been regularly complaining to the authorities to take measures that could safeguard them from the destruction that is brought by floods, but they never pay any heed.
Bhalla said now it is high time for the Government, to work on proper counter mechanisms for such disasters. He said that ideally, in the aftermath of the disaster, introspection should have been done at every level Government, public, individual about what went wrong in 2014 so as to develop a mitigation plan for future, but nothing of the sort happened. He blamed the district administration and Jammu Municipal Corporation (JMC) for failing to upgrade the drainage system in the city which often leads to water-logging as soon as there is a downpour.
He said Government should take all pre-emptive measures to prevent any future threat from floods. He said the Government should go whole hog in restoring private infrastructure as well.
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