Virbhadra Singh, Chief Minister today reached the cloud burst affected Ghanvi village to share the grief and agony faced by the villagers who lost their near and dear ones besides their houses and possessions in cloud burst area which washed away 18 houses on 14th August, 2007 evening.
He said that he was deeply aggrieved at the loss of 52 inhabitants of the village who have not been traced after the cloud burst, out of which only nine bodies had so far been recovered and search for remaining was being carried out at the incident and down stream. He said that the State Government would extend full cooperation and assistance for the rehabilitation of the affected families.
Virbhadra Singh said that affected families would be provided relief over and above the revised relief manual of the State government keeping in view the gravity of the incident and the damage caused to the villagers. He said that alternate sites were being identified to rehabilitate the survivors of the incident at safer places so that they were not subjected to any other such natural calamities in future.
He said that the heavy machinery had been deployed at the incident sites to retrieve the bodies of other missing persons of the incident. He said that the debris would be removed from incident sites and the land reclaimed for the bonafide use of the same by the stakeholders. He said that Government had recently revised the relief from Rs. 75,000 to Rs. one lakh to the next of kin of the deceased of the incident and the same amount would be disbursed to the legal heir of deceased. He said that State Government had set up the relief and rescue camp in village to provide villagers cooked food till the alternative arrangements were made for their rehabilitation. He said that blankets, taurplins and utensils were distributed among the affected families to help them restarting life afresh and overcome agony of incident with passage of time.
