Odisha to include eight state specific disasters under SDRF

With lightning strikes claiming more lives than major calamities like floods and cyclones, the Odisha government has decided to include eight state-specific disasters under the State Disaster Response Fund and directed authorities to prepare disaster management plans for the current fiscal.
The eight state-specific disasters are placed under the SDRF as per the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission, said Special Relief Commissioner P K Mohapatra soon after Chief Secretary G C Pati convened a state executive committee meeting on disaster management.
The eight disasters that figure in SDRF are heat wave, whirlwind, tornado, heavy rain, drowning, boat accident in normal times, snake bite in normal times, a release issued by the chief secretary's office said.

It has been decided that funds for assistance for the victim's families will be availed from SDRF. The state government hitherto was providing financial assistance to the victims families from the Chief Minister's Relief Fund.
The committee has resolved to move the National Disaster Response Force for leveraging more funds under this head, the release said.
Chief Secretary Pati also asked all the district collectors and departments to prepare their Disaster Management Plan for 2015-16 by the end of May next year.

The state government also emphasised on capacity building activities for mitigating the effects of various disasters and ordered the augmentation of such activities at both the community and departmental levels.

An amount of Rs 4,130 crore has been proposed as SDRF corpus during 2015-2020 as per recommendations of 14th Finance Commission and the corpus for 2015-16 will be around Rs 747 crore including 75 per cent of Central and 25 per cent of State share, the release said.
OSDMA (Odisha State Disaster Management Authority) was declared as the Nodal Agency for capacity building activities to face the disasters and has been asked to make training assessments of various departments and design capacity building activities accordingly.