Amit Shah directs officials to prepare District Disaster Management Plans in 90 days

New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday asked Relief Commissioners to prepare District Disaster Management Plans for districts under their jurisdiction in the next 90 days to enable swift response in case of an incident.

He also said action plans to tackle lightning and heat waves should also be developed at the earliest even as he emphasised the need for environmental conservation, as climate change and global warming have been identified as the primary causes of disasters.

Addressing Annual Conference of Relief Commissioners and Disaster Response Forces of States and Union Territories, he said India has become a global leader in the field of disaster management due to the excellent works carried out by the NDMA and NDRF among others.

He said every Relief Commissioner should prepare a District Disaster Management Plan for their districts in their state within 90 days, because until a district has its disaster management plan in place, the authorities cannot respond swiftly in the face of a disaster. A lightning action plan also needs to be formulated soon, he said while noting that several states have yet to implement the Incident Response System.

With summer intensifying, he also said a strong action plan should also be developed to tackle heat waves, and its timetable should be based on the actual experience of heat conditions. He said the union government also plans to make inter-state mock drills an annual programme and this would not be possible without the cooperation of the states.

"We also want to link Start-up India with the development of disaster relief technology. We have undertaken the task of training one lakh community volunteers, 20% of whom are women. Alongside this, we have launched the Yuva Aapda Mitra (Young Disaster Friends) scheme with an investment of Rs 470 crore," he said.

He said climate change and global warming are the primary causes of disasters, and therefore, they must move forward with environmental conservation as a core component. "Without environmental conservation, it is impossible to completely avoid disasters, if we do not care for the environment, we will not be able to prevent disasters," Shah said.

Shah said 10 years ago, the approach of the disaster mitigation organisations was for minimum casualties but after 10 years, the approach is now to achieve the target of zero casualty. "Whenever the history of India's disaster response will be written, the last 10 years of the Modi government will be recorded as a transformative decade. In these 10 years, we have made significant achievements in all four areas -- capacity, efficiency, speed and accuracy," he said.

"In the last 10 years, NDMA, NDRF (National Disaster Response Force) and CDRI (Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure) have strongly positioned India to become a global leader in the field of disaster management," he said.