The Kerala government will provide a compensation amount of Rs 4 lakh to families who have lost 70% to 100% of their homes and Rs 10 lakh to families who have lost both their homes and their land in the heavy rains and landslides that have hit the state. Announcing this at a press meet, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan stated that as of 9 am on Wednesday, 1,89,567 people belonging to 58,107 families have been rehabilitated into 1,118 relief camps across the state. The death toll in the state due to the calamity has touched 95.
Pinarayi Vijayan was speaking after a state cabinet meeting in which the government had discussed the various measures to be taken in order to help the families affected due to the disaster.
“This disaster has hit us at a time when the state was still rebuilding from last year’s deluge,” the CM said, adding that the state government has come up with measures to ensure that emergency relief is provided to all the affected families at the earliest.
“The cabinet has decided that an emergency relief aid of Rs 11,000 will be provided to all the affected families in the state. Along with this, the village officers of the various affected areas have been instructed to make a list of all the houses that have been partially and completely damaged,” the CM added.
“Along with homes, there has also been heavy destruction to agricultural property, roads and buildings. We are continuing to receive donations to the Chief Minister’s Distress Relief Fund (CMDRF) and we will be using these funds for rebuilding purposes just like we did last year,” he stated.
Taking into consideration the severity of the floods and the destruction it has caused in various parts of the state, Pinarayi Vijayan said that these places will be declared as “flood affected areas”.
The CM also said that the cause of most of the deaths this year was due to landslides, which according to him were more in number than in August 2018. “A total of 64 landslides have been reported this year and rescue attempts are still going on in several areas of Wayanad and Malappuram,” he added.
On Tuesday, the CM had visited the landslide affected areas of Wayanad and Malappuram and assured people living in the relief camps that the state would stand united and survive the floods like it did in 2018.