TA and Hills Minister launches Lightning Resilient Campaign for all North Eastern States
Source: The Sangai Express / DIPR

Imphal, March 12 2021: Under the leadership of N Biren Singh, Manipur has decided to launch community focused Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) programmes specially for safety against hazards like lightning, flood, drought , landslides and earthquakes to make Manipur a resilient state � said V Valte, Minister for Tribal Affairs & Hills Areas and Transport while launching online Lightning Resilient Campaign for all North Eastern states including Sikkim.

Speaking on the occasion as chief guest on behalf of CM, the Minister stated that "As a unique initiative by our dynamic CM, Manipur is going to launch Tribal DRR and Hill Area DRR programme in collaboration with India Meteorological Department ( IMD), Ministry of Earth Science, North Eastern Space Application Center( NESAC) Shillong and Climate Resilient Observing Systems Promotion Council(CROPC) .

These programmes are first of its kind initiative in North Eastern region".

He continued that since agriculture is the main livelihood in Manipur, accurate weather based farming shall be useful and are renovating the disaster management systems under the guidance of CM to make it proactive and preventive, not reactive and relief as was done in the past.

The Minister further informed that forecasts of lightning, flood and drought is being launched with SMS service and shall launch special weather service for the citizens before the onset of monsoon.

He also informed that the CM has written letter to Union Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan for installation of Doppler Weather Radar at Imphal and Automatic Weather Stations in hills and tribal area for better service.

The minister also invited NESAC - the nodal center of Indian Space Research Organization for satellite driven services to Manipur .

He thanked the organizers CROPC, NESAC and IMD for inviting CM Manipur as the chief guest on the occasion and lauded the work being done by these organisations in reducing deaths due to lightning and other hazards.

Dr M Mohapatra, Director General of India Met Department while speaking from Delhi assured that the demand of Manipur and entire North East shall be met with recent steps in setting up high quality observations systems in the NE region, impact based forecasting and community outreach services.

Dr PLN Raju, Director of NESAC briefed about the lightning early warning and other services being offered to all 8 states in North East - specially to disaster management, agriculture, water resource , forest environment and climate change departments.

Col Sanjay Srivastava, Chairman CROPC said that there will be no deaths due to lightning there is accurate knowledge and proven solutions now.

He offered CROPC services to all to prevent such deaths and damages.

Lightning Resilient India Campaign is going to be life changer for the region first by preventing deaths and secondly by climate change adaptation, he added.

During the event, it was brought out by Minister V Valte that due to diverse geography in the North East the Government is going to start Tribal Disasters Risk Reduction and Hill Area Disaster Risk Reduction programme.

He also highlighted the high risk in Manipur due to earthquake Zone 5 and weather hazards and hence he requested for special fund from the Ministries for Manipur and NE region and requested NESAC and CROPC to arrange fund through other schemes and CSR to install lightning warning hooters and lightning arresters in identified hotspots and to start flood warning and drought forecasts for Manipur.

Ashin Johnny OSD Nagaland SDMA, Dr Sarat Kumar Das from Tripura SDMA, representative from Assam SDMA also spoke on the occasion and extended support to the lightning Resilient India Campaign.

Anil Kumar Sinha, IAS Former VC BSDMA, Dr KJ Ramesh, Member National Commission for Monitoring Pollution, all Relief Commissioners of North eastern states, Bashanta Sharma State Coordinator BJP, Anup Srivastava Senior Consultant NDMA, NM Prusty, Shafeequr Rahman, State Coordinator NSRMP Manipur and many CSOs and NGOs took part in the event.

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