Uttarakhand: The truth came out in the first monsoon season itself, the opposition leader called the arrangements of the government and the disaster management department inadequate
Leader of Opposition Yashpal Arya said that the Uttarakhand government may make a million claims but what was feared ultimately happened. The first rain of the season exposed the arrangements of the government and its disaster management department. He said that the claims of the government are completely on paper and empty promises. On the ground, the government has completely failed to manage disasters in the state.
The Leader of Opposition said that in the first rain itself, there has been heavy damage to drinking water lines, residential houses, main roads and connecting roads due to land subsidence and water ingress in many places in the entire state. Due to the first rain itself, landslides at many places have closed roads and paths, due to which life has been disrupted in the entire state. He said that due to the continuous disasters for the last several years, hundreds of bridges and thousands of kilometers of road have been damaged, which the government has already failed to repair.
He said that the Uttarakhand government is boasting that it is the first state in the country to have created a separate disaster management department, but in reality, the executive officer and another senior officer have resigned from this department at the state level and all the employees including the district disaster management officer in the districts have been kept on contract.
The Leader of Opposition said that Uttarakhand is a disaster-prone state which is always under the grip of one of the disasters like earthquake, cloudburst, heavy rainfall, landslide, bursting of artificial lake etc. In such a situation, it is not right to expect more from the headless disaster management department and the contract workers of the districts.
Yashpal Arya said that despite being a disaster-prone state, the disaster management department is still running in a traditional manner. The preparation of the government and the disaster management officers is always focused on relief and rescue operations after the disaster. They have never tried to reduce the impact of the disaster by predicting disasters.
The Leader of Opposition said that this time the weather department is predicting heavy rains in the state. In such a situation, it will be a big challenge for the government to safely evacuate people trapped in a natural disaster without preparation and to provide them relief material in time.
