Disaster management volunteers given 'area specific' training

KOLKATA: The state Disaster Management and Civil Defence department is providing "area specific" training to its volunteers.

Bengal has diverse landscape with hills in its extreme north and sea in south. Again the western part has many forests and thick jungles. So, the nature of mishaps is also different.

In hills, people face trouble or even get trapped due to landslides. While in South Bengal districts, flood is a major problem.

In the western part, herds of elephants often enter villages and snakes pose great danger where volunteers need to play an active role.

"Keeping this in mind, the department has decided to provide area specific training to the volunteers," said a senior official of the Disaster Management and Civil Defence department adding that every year, around 20,000

to 25,000 volunteers undertake the training.

"It's a rare case where a volunteer from East Mindapore agrees to work in the Hills. Similarly, those in the Hills are not willing to come to Kolkata to undertake a rescue work. So, the necessity was felt to make them expertise on the respective type of work they have to execute," the official said.

In Kolkata and its surrounding areas, the volunteers mainly need to learn how to carry out rescue work when there is an incident

like major fire or when people get trapped in a place. So, training as per requirement will be given to them.

Similarly, those in the areas where floods or flood like situation is inevitable almost every year will get special training to rescue people trapped in a house surrounded

with water or how to treat a person who had been bitten by a snake.

The curriculum based training programme for volunteers have turned out to be fruitful for the department as the work was getting done faster and common people are also getting benefitted.