Govt brings changes in approach to disaster management: Rajnath

The government has brought about a change in its approach to disaster management from a relief-centric to a holistic and integrated coverage of the entire matter, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said on Monday.

Addressing members of the Consultative Committee of Parliament attached to the Ministry of Home Affairs, Singh said the new approach includes prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response, relief, reconstruction and rehabilitation of both man-made and natural disasters.

The Home Minister said this approach is based on the conviction that development cannot be sustainable unless disaster mitigation is built in the development process. Singh told the MPs that the National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM) has been entrusted with the responsibility for human resource development, capacity- building including training and education, research, documentation and policy planning in the field of disaster management.

The Home Minister said the government had on February 5 announced setting up of a southern campus of NIDM in Andhra Pradesh at a cost of Rs 70.87 crore in two years. Singh said an annual conference of Relief Commissioners /Secretaries of the Department of Disaster Management of states and UTs has been organised by the Home Ministry before the onset of southwest monsoon to review the preparedness and discuss other disaster management related issues.