Mamata announces compensation for Bulbul victims

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh each for the families of those who have died due to the cyclone Bulbul. The storm has claimed 10 lives and impacted about 6 lakh people in Bengal.

Speaking at a meeting with district officials at Kakdwip in South 24 Paraganas district the Chief Minister lauded the state administration for minimising the casualties due to the cyclone. She also said that even the Centre has praised the state government’s role in dealing with the natural calamity.

“The administration has done a praiseworthy job. Without it the loss of lives could have been much higher. Even the Central government has praised our work,” said Banerjee. She also said that if 1.78 lakh people were not evacuated from the affected areas the devastation would be much larger in scale.

Pointing out that the storm made severe impact on power supply, availability of drinking water and agriculture the Chief Minister instructed the departments of Irrigation, Forest and Power to collaborate with each other and normalise the situation.

The district officials informed Banerjee that 21 sub stations have been damaged by the cyclone and at least 6,000 electric polls got uprooted. They also said that it would take about 10 days to normalise power supply in the affected areas.

Banerjee said that during her areal survey of the affected areas she noticed that a lot of dams near coastal areas were breached due to the storm. She instructed the Irrigation Department officials to repair the dams at the earliest possible.

The Chief Minister also asked the district officials to plant more mangrove in the coastal areas to prevent soil erosion and damage to dams.

She set up a task force to review the relief work every 48 hours. Chief Secretary Rajeev Sinha was made the head of the task force.

The Chief Minister said that a Central team will soon visit the affected areas to asses the damage caused the cyclone Bulbul and asked the state officials to prepare their own assessment of the damage. Banerjee also asked them to cooperate with the Central officials.