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| Sunday, 13 March 2005 |
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TN officials show the way by Lionel Yodhasinghe Delegation of power to the provincial authorities thereby empowering Government officials enabled them to take prompt decisions to handle tsunami disaster efficiently in Nagapattinam. Tamil Nadu Government's Secretary of Rural Development Ms. Santha Sheela Nair who was in charge of overall supervision of relief operations in Nagapattinam told this at a press conference in Colombo. Earlier, Nagapattinam District Collector Dr. P. Radhakrishnan and Ms Nair accompanied TAFREN officials to visit tsunami affected areas and held discussions on the Nagapattinam experience and lessons learnt and what Sri Lanka could learn in reconstruction effort. Our district collectors took their decisions and acted immediately to rescue people and distribute relief especially to save victims from post tsunami dangers. She said that Nagapattinam, a haphazardly developed town was completely destroyed. Various natural and man made disasters in the past had killed 3,000 people since 1952 but within 20 minutes the tsunami killed over 8,000. A team of officials divided into 11 teams and each was given different sectors such as health, water, sanitation, shelter, medicine. All of them were able to manage the given tasks and were able to restore the essential services successfully by December 31, she said. Red tape stand in the way to manage such disaster situation in Sri Lanka. Because we still adopt rules and regulations of the British system and this has had an impact in the recent tsunami devastation too, said Secretary to the Prime Minister and TAFREN Director Lalith Weeratunga. Sri Lanka can learn a lot from India in handling disaster management methods as India was able to manage the disaster efficiently and reduce further damage. Dr. Radhakrishnan said that use of 'common sense system' is the most effective measure to handle such disaster situation in any part of the world and Indian district collectors are empowered to take free decisions on such occasions. Preparedness is another vital aspect for local authorities to be ready with the needy goods and service to face to any challenging situation during the year, he said. He said that Sri Lanka is getting three level of donations, bilateral,
multilateral and private sector and NGO aid and the TAFREN is expected to
share the Indian experience to expedite the tsunami reconstruction effort
and rehabilitate the livelihood of the tsunami affected in the South, North
and East. |
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