Excerpts from Sikkim Express : Landslide Mitigation with Japanese technical help

Meeting on landslide mitigation held

Focus on preparation of State Disaster Management Plan with special emphasis on landslide management

 GANGTOK, January 13 (IPR): A meeting on the prospect of funding landslide mitigation through Japanese cooperation was held on January 6 in the chamber of Commissioner-cum-Secretary, Land Revenue & Disaster Management Department.

The meeting centered around how landslides could be tackled with the assistance and technology, to be provided by the Japanese government.
Dr. Surya Prakash, State Nodal Faculty for Sikkim from the National Institute of Disaster Management, was present on the occasion. He explained the purpose of his visit and provided the background as to how the State had been selected as one of the sites to be studied by a team of experts from Japan. He informed that a Joint Declaration by way of an MOU had been signed between the Government of India and the Japanese Government in October 2008 to work in possible areas of consideration and collaboration of which disaster management was one of the items apart from defence and science & technology, agreed upon by the two sides at the ministerial level. The Japanese have thereafter sought to work in landslide prone areas of the country of which 3 states including Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim are the selected States, where landslide sites under the Border Roads Organizations(BRO) will be the working area with the Japanese teams.

My thanks to Ms Sarikah Atreya of Sikkim Express for the story

Praful Rao