Guwahati (The Stellar News): A high level inter-ministerial central team (IMCT) comprising of seven members from different Union ministries visited various districts of Assam for on-spot assessment of the flood/landslide damages during the current year.
The team, led by Sandeep Poundrik, additional secretary (mitigation) of NDMA in New Delhi, wrapped up the details of their visit (23, 24, 25 November 2020) with the senior Assam government officials today at Janata Bhawan in the city.
It discussed about the damages & loss of the livelihood & properties in the districts of Kamrup, Goalpara, Bongaigaon, Nagaon and Hojai where the State chief secretary Jishnu Baruah urged the team to consider releasing of the fund under national disaster response forces (NDRF) for repair and restoration works against the damages during current year flood. He also requested the team to consider erosion as an item admissible under SDRF/NDRF in their report to the Union government.
Poundrik in presence of other team members namely Ayush Puniya (Union rural development ministry), Narendra Kumar (Union agriculture & farmers Welfare ministry), Sudhir Kumar (Union Jal Shakti ministry), SK Pradhan (Union finance ministry), OP Suman (Union power ministry) and Abhishek Agarwal (Union road & transport ministry), assured the State government saying that the team would submit the report with recommendations very soon to the Centre. Mentionable is that Assam government this year has requested for release of rupees 2642.99 crores from SDRF/NDRF for repair and restoration works. The meeting was also attended by Avinash Joshi, principal secretary to the State government for environment & forest, revenue, etc, Dhiraj Saud, State project coordinator of ASDMA, Ananda Kumar Das, joint secretary in State revenue, with a host of responsible senior officials.
