The Kozhikode Municipal Corporation has called upon the Centre to declare the Kerala floods as a national calamity. A meeting of the corporation council on Saturday unanimously passed the motion proposed by Mayor Thottathil Raveendran.
The Mayor has contributed his monthly honorarium of ₹15,000 to the Chief Minister’s Distress Relief Fund and has requested the councillors to contribute as well. The councillors will together contribute around ₹1 lakh to the relief fund. Besides, the councillors have been asked to coordinate the collection of aid from residents’ associations in their respective divisions to be contributed to the fund.
The council also demanded that the State government immediately release funds for the reconstruction of roads. The council granted ₹5,000 per division for immediate use for the smooth functioning of relief camps. The Mayor urged the councillors, who are in charge of camps in their respective divisions, to collect excess relief materials at each camp and hand them over to the district-level collection centre, as the camps will be closed in a few days.
The council recommended Health Officer R.S. Gopakumar for the State government’s Good Service Entry for his efforts to contain Nipah infection in the district. Dr. Gopakumar was in charge of organising the funerals of the 17 people who succumbed to the infection.