The Kerala cabinet on Tuesday decided to allot Rs 961.24 crore to repair the roads that were damaged in the 2019 floods and landslides in the state. According to a statement by Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, 11,880 km road under Local Self Government Department (LSGD) in the state were damaged during the floods and landslides.
The money for the repair works has been allotted from Chief Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund (CMDRF). The project, which has been named as ‘chief minister’s LSGD road renovation project’, has allocated separate funds to each district, according to the damages incurred.
The highest amount has been allotted to Wayanad district, which saw massive destruction due to the landslides. A sum of Rs 149.44 crore has been allotted to the district. Twelve people were killed in the landslide in Wayanad’s Puthumala alone.
Kannur district has been allotted Rs 120.69 crore; Palakkad - Rs 110.14 crore; Kozhikode - Rs 101 crore; Alappuzha - Rs 89.78 crore; Pathanamthitta - Rs 70.07 crore; Kollam - Rs 65.93 crore; Thrissur - 55.71 crore, Malappuram - Rs 50.94 crore; Idukki and Ernakulam - Rs 35.79 crores each; Kottayam - Rs 33.99 crore; Thiruvananthapuram -Rs 26.42 crore; and Kasaragod - Rs 15.56 crore.
“The government has started implementing what we had declared ahead of the New Year. Committees will be formed at local levels to monitor the works. Engineers from the specific LSGDs will be included to form a technical committee in district level,” Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said in his Facebook post.
Kerala witnessed massive floods in the last two years. Before the state could completely recover from the 2018 floods - which is said to be the biggest flood of the century in the state - it was struck by another massive flood and landslides in August 2019.
Despite this, Kerala was excluded from the calamity relief list of states released by the Centre recently. Seven states were chosen by the Centre for a relief fund of Rs 5,908 crore from the National Disaster Relief Fund (NDRF). The High-Level Committee (HLC), chaired by Home Minister Amit Shah, chose seven states: Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Tripura, Assam, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh. The Kerala government has raised strong criticism following this exclusion.
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