Bhubaneswar: Even after 41 days to the hitting cyclone Fani, about 88,000 households in the Puri district yet to get power supply back.
In Puri district, electricity has been restored to nearly 3 lakh out of 3.88 lakh affected consumers. The balance restoration work is very likely to be completed in next few days.
Energy secretary Hemant Sharma informed this at a high-level review meeting held under the chairmanship of Revenue and Disaster Management Minister Sudam Marndi here at Rajiv Bhawan.
Panchayati Raj & Drinking Water and Housing & Urban Development departments claimed that water supply has been normalised in both rural and urban areas. Where electricity supply has not been restored, the pumps are being operated through generators.
As many as 173 school buildings in Puri district and 11 in Khurda district have been fully damaged in the cyclone.
Revenue Minister expressed his concern for running of these schools which are to reopen after summer vacations June 19.
School & Mass Education department officials present in the meeting said that since reconstruction of school buildings would take some time, they are making necessary alternative arrangements for running of those schools in other educational institutions, cyclone shelters and other government buildings.
Marndi asked concerned departments to take necessary steps for immediate repair and restoration of the damaged school buildings in a time bound manner to facilitate running of the school.
“Whenever construction of any school or college or other government building was being taken up in cyclone prone areas, cyclone resilient design must be adopted for such construction,” he suggested.
He also enquired about the functioning of the existing two Doppler Weather Radar Stations at Paradip and Gopalpur and directed to closely follow up with the Centre for installation of Radars at the two stations Sambalpur and Balasore.
Meanwhile, the state government has released an amount of Rs123.90 crore to the collectors of Puri, Khurda and Cuttack districts (severely affected by cyclone Fani) for payment of different assistance such as house building assistance and help to the fishermen. This is in addition to Rs 197.59 crore which was released to Puri collector earlier for disbursement towards house building assistance.
So far, the Special Relief Commissioner (SRC) has released Rs1481.05 crore to different departments and collectors of the affected districts for various relief and restoration measures.