Samikhsya Bureau
Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik on Monday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to sanction five lakh Prime Minister Awas Yojana (G) special houses for people whose houses were damaged in Cyclone Fani.
In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Patnaik said: “The state government is undertaking a detailed house damage assessment, which would be completed shortly. The exact number of houses damaged completely or substantially will be arrived at after the survey. However, according to preliminary estimation, about five lakh houses have been completely or substantially damaged across 14 districts with the major loss occurring in Puri.”
The Odisha chief minister said that during Modi’s visit to Odisha on May 6 after the cyclone, a presentation had been made by the state administration highlighting the dire need for building disaster resilient houses along the coastal belt of Odisha vulnerable to cyclonic storms. “As had been mentioned during presentation made on May 6, I reiterate our request for waiver of the Permanent Wait List (PWL ) criterion for this particular allocation and also consider a Centre-state fund sharing pattern of 90:10 as a special case,” Patnaik said
Thanking the Union government for all support to the state to effectively manage the extremely severe cyclone, Patnaik added that since rainy season was fast approaching and the monsoon was likely to reach Odisha around June 10, the state government was going ahead with issuing of work orders from June 1 next in anticipation of the approval of the proposal by the Central government.
