KATHMANDU: A meeting of the government’s Disaster Management Central Executive Committee that took place today decided to make disaster response works more effective.
The meeting held at the Ministry of Home Affairs agreed to mobilize all state organizations to mitigate the disaster risk and post-disaster loss by ensuring rescue efforts prompt and effective.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, Ishwor Pokhrel, Home Minister, Ram Bahadur Thapa ‘ Badal’, Minister for Federal Affairs and General Administration, Lal Babu Pandit, secretaries of several ministries and security officials were present in the meeting.
The meeting also decided to use helicopters in the necessary areas and make immediate reports to clear the obstructed highways and urge all bodies to work efficiently for the arrangement of drinking water and food supply in the affected areas. It also directed the local levels to remain more active to normalize the daily life of people in the areas facing disaster problems.
A direction was issued for the mobilization of health workers with no further delay to prevent the possibility of health hazards in the affected areas, to restore damaged road infrastructure and other physical structures including houses and offices.
In his address to the meeting, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence Pokhrel underlined the need of making the rescue efforts, highlighting the necessity of developing a vibrant and permanent mechanism to deal with the disaster issues. He urged for making arrangements for receiving information and updates about the disaster loss through one door system.
Home Minister Thapa briefed the meeting that all available mechanisms were mobilized to promptly repose the disaster-related incidents. Preparedness was adopted to mitigate the loss to be caused by a possible disaster.
Incessant rain impeded the effort to use helicopters for the disaster-response efforts on Friday. Today, a chopper was used as per the need, but lack of the required number of boats posed some challenge to the rescue works. As he said, preparations are underway to develop one door policy for the distribution of relief materials.
In the meeting chaired by Home Minister, Home Secretary Prem Kumar Rai said discussions were on to intensify rescue and relief efforts analyzing the situation so far.
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