Keep shelters ready: Special Relief Commissioner tells Odisha district collectors

BHUBANESWAR:  The State government on Thursday asked the collectors of coastal districts to spruce up the cyclone shelters in their areas and initiate steps to ensure electricity and provisioning of drinking water, dry food in view of a possible cyclone in the Bay of Bengal.

Special Relief Commissioner (SRC) PK Jena reviewed the preparedness at a high-level meeting attended by secretaries of Urban Development, Panchayati Raj and Rural Development departments. Though the place of the landfall is yet to be known, the SRC discussed with collectors of Bhadrak, Kendrapara, Jagatsinghpur, Puri, Ganjam, Mayurbhanj, Jajpur, Nayagarh, Khurda, Cuttack and Gajapati about the preparedness and asked them to keep the cyclone shelters ready. 

Jena asked the collectors to give priority to pregnant women, elderly and sick persons during shifting to the cyclone shelters. Besides, arrangements of generators for primary health centres (PHCs) prior to the cyclone are also being made. He said that the fire department, Odisha Disaster Rapid Action Force and National Disaster Response Force have already started preliminary work on cyclone preparedness.

 The SRC also held discussion with telecom operators on their preparedness for the cyclone. It was agreed that in case of any problem, all operators will work on common intra-circle portability.   On the other hand, Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has stepped up measures to deal with any exigency.

Municipal Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Singh, who took part in the pre-cyclone preparedness meeting,  said, “We are arranging for complete power backup for wherever it is required and have alerted our field staff who can be deputed for rescue and restoration work, if required.” The officials of different wings of the corporation have been asked to keep all the equipment and machinery in readiness for their use as and when required, Singh said.