Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu asked the central team that visited the flood-affected areas of AP to declare the floods a national calamity in the state. In the meeting held on Thursday evening with the central team in the secretariat, he explained the enumeration of the flood damage and crops, along with crops there was a huge loss of property.
On the other hand, earlier the state government has sent a report to the center stating that the loss of Rs.6882 crore has been incurred in Andhra Pradesh. For two days, the central teams visited NTR, Krishna, Guntur and Bapatla districts.
Chief Minister said that due to heavy rains and floods in the state, an unexpected disaster has arisen and caused a huge loss of Rs 6,882 crore. Heavy rains and floods have caused serious damage to the farmers and people, and in view of this, he asked the central government to declare it as a national calamity instead of looking at it as an ordinary calamity and provide generous assistance.
He explained that record rains and flash floods have disrupted people’s lives, 50 cm of rainfall was recorded in two days, and such a big flood has never occurred in the history of Prakasam Barrage on Krishna river. He said that the Prakasam barrage was built to meet the maximum flood of 11.90 lakh cusecs and the recent rains caused a flood of 11.43 lakh cusecs. So far this is the record level flood.
Chief Minister said that apart from loss of life and property, they experienced severe distress with no water to drink, food to eat or fear for their lives. He asked the central team to ensure that the center gets help to bring the people back to normalcy. He made it clear that unless a good package is given to the flood victims and farmers who have lost everything, they will not be able to recover.
Anil Subrahmanyam, Joint Secretary, Union Home Department, who led the central team, briefed the Chief Minister about the experiences of his team’s visit to the flood affected areas. He said that people still have a lot of faith in the government even after such floods and sufferings. He said that the measures taken by the government have given them comfort.
He said that the government’s relief efforts through drones were very innovative. He said that during the field level visit, it came to their attention that there has been heavy crop loss and severe damage in terms of infrastructure. He said that people expressed their sorrows over the Budameru floods.
Stating that after almost 60 years, such floods have occurred, he said that people have demanded a permanent solution to this problem. He assured that they will take all the issues under their scrutiny to the attention of the Center and work hard to get appropriate help.