*Reviews welfare initiatives for Kashmiri migrants
Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Dec 3: Minister for Revenue, Relief and Rehabilitation, Syed Basharat Bukhari today chaired a high level meeting to review the implementation of various initiatives and schemes for Kashmiri migrants.
The meeting was attended by Financial Commissioner Relief & Rehabilitation, B B Vyas, Director Finance, Shagufta Qazi, besides officers of the Relief Organization and representatives of concerned organizations.
Regarding the upgradation of residential accommodations from existing one room tenements (ORTs) to two room tenements (TRTs), the Minister called for taking up constructions afresh and resolving the architectural issues so that quality of assets is not compromised.
Syed Basharat Bukhari also ordered mapping of existing zones to assess viability of rearrangement or subsequent expansion of infrastructure at these zones.
The Minister also approved substituting the existing ‘Medical Reimbursement Scheme’ with the new ‘Medicare Scheme’ to reduce the time lag in granting sanction to the medical claims. “The scheme will come into effect from April 01, 2017 and will do away with the previous time consuming and cumbersome procedure of filing medical claims”, the Minister said.
On the issue of food supplies, Syed Basharat Bukhari directed the concerned to provide financial compensation in lieu of food-grains to the migrant families that have yet not received ration for over two months.
Taking serious note of the delay in switching over to Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme for distributing Government sponsored financial assistance, the Minister directed the Relief Organization to immediately implement the scheme in remaining areas and requested the migrant families to cooperate with the authorities by sharing the requisite information well in time.
He ordered the Finance Department to undertake a special audit of Relief Organization to help it achieve goals and objectives by measuring overall performance and productivity. “The audit will protect the organization from financial misstatements and will present a reliable picture of the organization,” he said.
Meanwhile, Basharat Bukhari called for making the State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA) functional and vibrant.
“Existing SDMA models of different States need to be studied and best practices adopted, suitably tailoring them to J&K’s needs and requirements,” the Minister said while chairing a high level meeting of the Project Management Unit setup for the implementation of World Bank funded project in the State.
The meeting was convened to review the status of disaster management in J&K.
Financial Commissioner (Relief & Rehabilitation), B B Vyas, Director Finance, Shagufta Qazi, Director Technical, Bashir Ahmed Shah, Director Disaster Management, Aamir Ali, besides other officers of the Relief and Rehabilitation Department and other concerned organizations attended the meeting.
The Minister called for time-bound implementation of the State Disaster Management Policy and State Disaster Management Plan.
He gave instructions for establishing fully functional State Level Emergency Operation Centres (EOCs), one each at Srinagar and Jammu and subsequently making provision to replicate the same at district level.
It was decided that community based disaster management programme would be initiated in the state and stakeholders from the society including volunteers, teachers, doctors, as well as members from Civil Defence, Fire services, Police, State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), Social Welfare and others will be provided training and equipped with basic rescue equipments. Further the inter-organizational coordination will be promoted. For this purpose Poonch and Anantnag districts have been selected under a pilot project ‘Sustainable Reduction of Disaster Risk’ (SRDR).
The Minister announced that NDMA Sponsored scheme Aapida Mitra is being launched in Srinagar district to provide rigorous disaster preparedness training and equipment to 200 volunteers from the community.
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