PANJIM: North Goa District Administration has decided to review and update its six-year-old disaster management plan.

Even after drafting of the plan, there has been no tangible improvement in the preparedness level in time of calamities. 

North Goa Collector Levinson Martins has convened a meeting of the stakeholders on August 17 to discuss and review the disaster management plan. 

Goa Institute of Management (GIM) had drafted the Disaster management plan for North Goa in November 2012 with an objective to facilitate execution of activities for prevention and preparedness, response operations, coordination, rehabilitation and community awareness and involvement.

Speaking to Herald, Martins said that currently he is focused on reviewing and updating the disaster management plan. “I have convened a meeting of all the stakeholders in this regard. We have to update the plan by taking into account the current ground situation,” he said. 

Martins said that the plan was prepared taking into account the population density, infrastructure, etc as existing in 2012. “Six years have passed for that and we cannot rely on the same plan as vast changes have taken place,” he explained. The collector is the chairman of the District Disaster Management Authority, which is entrusted with the task of drafting the management plan. 

The stakeholders involved in this are fire and emergency services, police, agriculture department, panchayats, municipalities, SDOs, Mamlatdars, BDOs, etc. 

Disaster management is a continuous and integrated process of planning, organizing, coordinating and implementing measures for preventing danger or threat of any disaster, mitigation or reduction of risk of any disaster or its severity or consequences and capacity building etc.