The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Collector gives an earful to officials

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Thursday, Aug 14, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Collector gives an earful to officials

Staff Reporter

Delay in flood loss estimation

Meet held on flood contingency plan
Reports sought by August 15

Kakinada: Taking a serious view of the delay in estimating the flood loss, Collector Gopalakrishna Dwivedi said on Wednesday that he would issue show-cause notices to special officers who failed to discharge their duties properly. Some of them did not even visit the affected mandals. The Revenue and Agriculture Departments were yet to get a detailed picture of the magnitude of damages even three days after the havoc caused by floods. Officials prepared impressive action taken reports but almost nothing happened, he observed.

Addressing a meeting on flood contingency plan here, Mr. Dwivedi said many officials were not in possession of even the preliminary information on losses caused by floods but they somehow managed the show in Tuesday’s review meeting chaired by In-charge Minister J.C. Diwakar Reddy at Amalapuram. Such negligent attitude would no longer be tolerated as what the flood victims want were relief and rehabilitation but not excuses for not doing certain things which do not require more than a couple of hours. For instance, village-level teams comprising officials of revenue, agriculture and farmers could immediately take stock of the situation. But, a good number of the officials were unable to take swift action partly due to negligence which was not pardonable.

Directive

Mr. Dwivedi ordered that a comprehensive report of the extent of damages caused by floods be submitted to him by the evening of August 15 and compensation paid the next day. He would not like to see action delayed beyond August 18 as Chief Minister Y.S Rajasekhara Reddy was scheduled to visit the district on August 20. A farmer and survey number wise assessment of crop damages should be made to help farmers who were really in distress.

The Collector ordered the Department of Irrigation and Command Area Development to keep all the officials concerned regularly informed of flood warnings so that they could contain the damages by mobilising men and material in the least possible time. He instructed that there should be some core teams looking after the entire gamut of disaster mitigation measures.

Joint Collector G.S.R.K.R. Vijay Kumar, Superintendent of Police Y Nagi Reddy and others were present.

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