AWARENESS GENERATION ON DISASTER
MANAGEMENT
India has been traditionally
vulnerable to disasters. Cyclones and earthquakes do come and
devastate areas resulting in human loss and damage to property.
The super cyclone in Orissa in 1999 and the devastating earthquake
in Bhuj in the year 2001 clearly underline the country’s vulnerability
as also the need to built capabilities for handling such disasters.
Disaster management which was for long under the Ministry of Agriculture
was transferred to the Home Ministry effectively from June 2002.
Since then several major initiatives have been taken for prevention
and mitigating the impact of calamities specially created by nature.
The launch of a massive awareness generation campaign on disaster
management is one of the important steps taken by the Ministry.
A meeting was
held in the Home Ministry today to discuss ways for accelerating
the steps for this awareness campaign on prevention and mitigation
aspects of disaster management. It was chaired by the Home Secretary
and Secretary, Information & Broadcasting; Secretary, Border
Management; DG, Doordarshan; DG, DAVP; the Principal Information
Officer and other concerned officers attended. The meeting was
primarily called to work out modalities for formulating the campaign
strategy. It came out in the meeting that the awareness campaign
will encompass panel discussions and spots on television and All
India Radio to generate awareness about the vulnerability to different
calamities like earthquakes, cyclones, floods and landslides in
various parts of the country. Simple mitigation measures which
can be adopted and do’s and don’s to be observed by the general
public also came up for discussion.
It was decided
in the meeting that a Steering Committee would be constituted
for designing the campaign strategy, content development and involving
the corporate sector in the awareness campaign.
