PUDUCHERRY: The Tamil Nadu Government is in the process of creating a separate village-wise database to deal with natural calamities, according to C. V. Sankar, Officer on Special Duty, Relief and Rehabilitation.

"The Government is always handicapped with proper data and even if it's available, it would be staggered. Now we are planning to have a packaged database," he said at a workshop on "After Tsunami: Lessons Learnt and Future Strategies" at the French Institute here on Saturday.

The database would have particulars such as the number of people living in a village, details about families, resource mapping, nearest possible evacuation centres, hospitals, officers and identifying suppliers for immediate relief.

Around 25 items needed for immediate relief had been identified and some of the items were women-specific, he noted.

The Disaster Risk Management programme being implemented in six districts of Tamil Nadu focusses on awareness generation, education, training and capacity building.

So far, 88123 teachers, officials, Disaster Management Committee members, and voluntary organisations had been trained.

The Disaster Management Plan was already prepared for the all these districts covering 54 blocks and 5,318 gram panchayats. The remaining coastal districts were being covered from January 2007 and the programme would be monitored closely and plans updated annually, he said.

About the permanent rehabilitation programme, he said that around 33,000 houses would be ready by end of March and another 16,302 multi-storied houses in and around Chennai would be handed over to the beneficiaries by June/July

The German Consul, Chennai, Erwin Wendland, said the permanent rehabilitation process was going in a slow pace. "Relief and rehabilitation programmes are not being carried out properly because of bureaucratic hurdles, corruption and clash among political parties," he observed. Professor Ravindra Gettu, Department of Civil Engineering highlighted some of the concerns in the construction of houses.

"Workmanship has been poor, even pathetic, due to the shortage of qualified contractors, masons and supervisors. Bad quality of water, inadequate mixes, designs and bricks could seriously limit the durability of the houses," he added.

However, he said the social engineering that had gone into most of the projects was "commendable and noteworthy."

Others, who spoke, include Jean-Pierre Muller, Director, French Institute, Joel Rayat, Consul General of France in Puducherry and Prof S. Mohan, IIT Chennai.

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