A picture of collapsed buildings after an earthquake in Kathmandu, Nepal on April 26, 2015. (Reuters)
After the devastating earthquake in Nepal, Delhi government today decided to conduct mock drills to check preparedness of the government agencies to deal with disasters and also chalked out a disaster management plan having broad guidelines.
The move comes after Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today held a review meeting to discuss the preparedness of the national capital in dealing with natural and man-made disasters.
According to senior government officials, government has prepared state disaster management plan and district disaster management plans are also being prepared for all the eleven district.
State disaster management plan talks of broad guidelines with standard operating procedure. Official claims that three districts (New Delhi, North-East and South-East) have prepared the plans while rest are in the final phase.
"Disaster management plan specifies the role of each government agencies like municipal corporation and police," chief secretary KK Sharma said.
According to the government, manpower is required to deal with any disaster and in the last five years 19,000 civic defense personnel got registered with the government.
"We have got 11 Quick Response Teams (QRT) in all the 11 district and are planning to add more. We have also got secured TETRA communication network in case mobile network fails in any disaster," Mr Sharma said.
Government has 24/7 emergency operation centre with number 1077. In any disaster, people can contact this number and response plan is immediately made and concern agencies are alerted, the officer said.
Claiming that Delhi is ready to deal with any calamity, Divisional Commissioner Ashwani Kumar said,"We have 10 well equipped disaster management centres in Delhi with a variety of safety requirement."
According to officials, soon Delhi CM and LG will hold a meeting on strengthening disaster management plan.
"We are going to strengthen the existing infrastructure and will adopt global practices. We will interact with expert and consult existing plan with them and review it. We will have mock drill to check effectiveness of state plan and make it a regular activity," Mr Sharma said.