Bhubaneswar: To relieve the needy people from the sweltering heatwave conditions, the Odia Film and Television Directors’ Association in association with Art of Giving distributed umbrellas among them here, Sunday. The novel initiative of distributing umbrellas began at 10 am and culminated at 2 pm. Association members and film directors including Sabyasachi Mohapatra, Himanshu Khatua, Sudhanshu Mohan Sahoo, Bobby Islam, Dilip Panda, Sailendra Parida, Jyoti Das, Shakti Baral, Pradeep Das, Jyoti Das, Ajay Singh and others distributed around 1,000 umbrellas to the people. “Apart from entertaining the audience, we also have the responsibility to help those who are in need and in this hot weather an umbrella will help people to stay safe from the scorching heat,” said director Sabyasachi Mohapatra.
The association will continue to organise such events in the coming days and provide ‘jala chhatra’ (water kiosk) facilities in Puri during Rath Yatra. Meanwhile, despite the advancement of Southwest Monsoon into some more parts of south India, heatwave conditions are very likely to prevail at one or two places over some districts in Odisha during the next three days, India Meteorological Department’s regional centre predicted Sunday. The state government had earlier directed health facilities at different levels to stay in total readiness for dealing with heat-related cases. The state recorded several sunstroke deaths recently due to the extreme heatwave conditions. Later in the evening, the Capital city received heavy rain.
ARINDAM GANGULY, OP