Gujarat CM declares Rs. 5 crore aid, daily 1 lakh food packets for flood-hit J&K

Gandhinagar, 9 September 2014

Gujarat Chief Minister Smt. Anandiben Patel today at a high level meeting reviewed the over-all situation emerging due to heavy rainfall in the state during last 24 hours. In last 24 hours, the Gujarat has received 8% rain-fall of the total rainfall of the year. So far, the state has received 87% of the total rainfall of the current year.

During the meeting, the Chief Minister had taken stock of the current situation by reviewing the situations of health, road-building, water levels in reservoirs and quantity of waters being released from them, electricity and civil supply of foods in the state. Gujarat’s Health and Road-building Minister Mr. Nitinbhai Patel and Chief Secretary Dr. Varesh Sinha and other senior secretaries had also attended the review meeting.

The officials from state meteorology department had informed that the Gujarat, particularly north-west regions, had received very heavy rainfall due to heavy pressure generated by clouds and winds.

Smt. Patel had ordered to the state administration to be on-alert to meet any situation emerging out of the current heavy rainfall and also ordered to all the district-incharge secretaries to keep a constant touch with the district administrations to co-ordinate all the necessary works.

The army has been alerted and rescue boats are also made available to meet any marooned situations emerging out at flood-hit the state’s cultural capital city of Vadodara. Beside these, the 3 teams of NDRF were also put on stand-by, the meeting was briefed.

Smt. Patel had instructed the administration to restore the power supply at all 125 flood affected villages. Beside these, 240 teams have been pressed into service to prevent out-break of any epidemic and to supply antibiotic medicines and to maintain cleanliness in the rain affected areas. As many as nine state highways and 27 panchayati roads have been damaged by the heavy rainfall. The restoration works on these roads would be initiated as soon as the rain stops, she added.

The Chief Minister said, on humanitarian ground the state government has decided to donate Rs 5-crore to the Chief Minister Relief Fund of Jammu & Kashmir state as that Himalan state has been severely affected by the heavy rainfall.

The state administration has also been geared up to supply daily 100,000 food-packets for next five-days for the marooned people of Jammu and Kashmir. The state administration is co-ordinating with Prime Minister’s Office and Union Cabinet Secretary to air-lift and deliver those packets daily in J & K, Smt. Patel added.

In the meeting the secretaries of the concerned departments had given details about the preparedness of their respective departments to handle the flood situations in Gujarat.