Our Correspondent
Imphal, August 12 (EMN): Manipur government auditor informed that planning for management of flood was done without scientific assessment of flood prone areas, morphological studies of rivers and did not comply with action plan of National Disaster Management guidelines.
“The quantum of flood damage in terms of areas, population and value of flood damage showed ascending trend during 2007-2016 in spite of execution of 22 flood management projects incurring expenditure of Rs 100.30 crore and utilisation of flood fighting materials,” said the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India report on “implementation of schemes for flood control and forecasting,” which was tabled in the recent concluded state assembly.
“The overall flood fighting and control activities remained inadequate” report stated. State witnessed 1443.1 mm of rainfall (till July 19) against last year’s record of 1852.4 mm, according to the Manipur centre of Indian Council of Agricultural Research. Considering the severity of the damages the state authority declared “state calamity” on July 3.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also expressed his anguish over the situation arising due to floods in NE and sent a five member inter-ministerial central team on July 13 to take stock of the flood crisis in Manipur for three days. The CAG report said the department also put into use of flood fighting materials valued at Rs 2.13 crore during 2008-16. However effective flood management including disaster preparedness and response planning including flood forecasting and warning was absent. As a result the state suffered from the grim situation of flood annually. Interestingly as per the record maintained by the flood control room, the concerned flood control department division had acted upon 14 complaints received during the period from 2008-09 to 2015-16, the report added.
However the report recommended to prepare digital elevation maps and frequency inundation maps based on scientific assessment of the flood prone areas and morphological study zoning Act 1978 besides constructing structures as per action plan prepared on the strength of comprehensive master plan of flood management in compliance with action plan of the National disaster guidelines.
The department had neither scientifically assessed the database of flood prone area not prepared frequently based inundation maps and depended on conventional system of flood forecasting/warning. The flood plain zoning Act 1978 was not operationalised and the action plan of the National Disaster Guidelines was not complied with till date of audit. There was inordinate delay in release of funds by the state government and incompletion of the schemes and projects.
