Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Oct 17: Three Members of Parliament from PDP met the Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his office chamber and submitted a memorandum demanding J&K’s reconstruction after the massive damages and losses suffered by State in recent rains and floods.
The PDP MPs namely Mehbooba Mufti, Muzaffar Hussain Beigh and Tariq Hamid Karra in a meeting with the Prime Minister submitted a memorandum. They stressed for affective measures and adequate funds for the reconstruction of J&K State. They said the core area of the reconstruction in J&K should be that the disaster provides an opportunity to build back better all the destroyed assets and leap frog into 21st century. For this, the Govt of India must speed track the J&K Govt’s partnership with the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank and the Global facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery for conducting a Joint Rapid Damage Needs Assessment. More specifically, Track-III operations of GFDRR – the standby recovery financing facility to channel international assistance for disaster recovery must be pursued.
They demanded that in addition to the technical assistance fund, resource must be availed from the Callable Fund which provide speedy access to financial resources for disaster recovery. They stressed to draw out a road map for J&K for capacity building in disaster risk management and in post disaster reconstruction. In terms of Geographical areas, there is need not only to define flood affected areas, but also flood impacted areas. As regard losses, both public and private assets have been damaged or lost. For public assets, the resources have to come from the Union. This can be worked upon as such a `Public Infrastructure Reconstruction Plan’. For the uninsured the damages and loss information must be done as ` self-assessment’ ratified by the trade and industry associations. In addition to these, the liabilities of households and commercial enterprises – principally repayment and interest on the bank loans and taxation to Government must be assessed and addressed separately. The financial needs and recovery and reconstruction must be done following a sector by sector damage and loss assessment with itemized distribution and priority setting based on sectors of economy and different population grouping in the affected areas.
PDP MPs suggested that the focus of the post flood rehabilitation programme in J&K should be on reconstruction of livelihood and rebuilding of economy. They further pointed out that the recovery and rehabilitation in J&K must focus on housing and public buildings, roads and bridges, irrigation, energy, environment, trade, horticulture, handicrafts, and tourism. Srinagar city be included in National Heritage and City Development and Augmentation Yojna and Smart city programme announced by the PM and so on.
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