Over 100 days after cyclone Fani battered Odisha, the High Level Committee of Ministry of Home Affairs chaired by union home minister Amit Shah today approved additional central assistance of Rs 3,338.22 crore for the state.
Odisha special relief commissioner Bishnupada Sethi said the assistance would help the state in giving assistance to people in re-building houses. High winds resulted in catastrophic damage to about 3.62 lakh houses in 14 districts of the state, leaving many homeless, and effecting as many as 1.6 crore people. Housing, power, telecommunication, agriculture, livestock, fisheries and livelihoods were the most affected sectors.
Since centre in May had given an advance of Rs 1,000 crore from National Disaster Response Fund following PM Modi’s visit to the state, Odisha would effectively get Rs 2,338 crore after adjusting the advance amount, Sethi added.
With windspeed crossing 200 km per hour, cyclone Fani battered Puri and Khurda districts on May 3, damaging the temple towns and the state capital Bhubaneswar. Early this month, a damage, loss, and needs assessment(DLNA) report authored by World Bank, Asian Development Bank and various UN agencies said the cyclone caused a total loss of Rs 24,176 crore, about 5 per cent of its Gross State Domestic Product.
The report, released by chief minister Naveen Patnaik, said Odisha needs Rs 29,315 crore to recover the loss to its infrastructure.
The cyclone left 64 people dead and 12 seriously injured. Over 1.88 lakh hectares of crop area was destroyed, 5.32 million poultry birds lost or killed in the cyclone, and over 6,200 large and small animals like cows, buffalo, goats and sheeps died in the cyclone.
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