About 24 more multipurpose cyclone shelters to come up in 3 coastal dists

Kolkata: With repeated incidents of natural calamities in the state, the Mamata Banerjee government is setting up 24 more multipurpose cyclone shelters in three coastal districts.

The cyclone shelters are coming up in East Midnapore, North and South 24-Parganas. Each of the three-storeyed cyclone shelters has capacity to accommodate at least 3,000 people. Sources said that the state Disaster Management and Civil Defence department has taken up the project to set up more cyclone shelters at the coastal areas. The move has been taken following an assessment carried out in the coastal areas that revealed the need of more cyclone shelters. The cyclone shelters would help the district administrations to evacuate more people after receiving alerts of any natural disaster.

Each of the cyclone shelters would come up at a cost of Rs 1 crore.

The project would be taken up in a 75 and 25 percent ratio between the Centre and the state. "It would take around one year to complete the project," said a state government officer.

The people would be accommodated mainly in the first and second floors of the cyclone shelters. The ground floor would be left vacant for various purposes related to relief work. As the risk of water inundation from the ground flood, people would not be accommodated in the ground floor.

In the past 10 years, 146 cyclone shelters were constructed. Each of these cyclone shelters have come up at a cost of Rs 4 crore. At the same time there are around 400 flood shelters.

The cyclone and flood shelters helped the administration to save the lives of lakhs of people at the time of super cyclone Amphan, cyclone Yaas and repeated floods.

This comes when the state has incurred a loss of Rs 9546.39 crore due to incessant rainfall only in the month of July. The maximum loss was in the agriculture sector and it was to a tune of Rs 5472.65 crore.

Meanwhile, MP Dev took stock of the flood situation visiting different parts of Ghatal in West Midnapore on Monday.

He assured all support to the affected people saying that the reconstruction work would initiate as soon as water recede from the area. He also assured that the state government would repair the damaged houses at the earliest.

The MP from Ghatal was also found distributing relief materials among the flood affected people.