Monday, January 9 2006 20:45 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Vellore: With the President having given his assent to the Disaster Management Bill, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) will be in place at the national level soon,Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil said here today (Jan 9,2006).

Though policy making would be done at the national level, what was now required was that district-level authorities should be constituted soon, he said, inaugurating the Centre For Disaster Mitigation and Management at the Vellore Institute of Technology,a Deemed University, this evening.

Patil said many State Governments like Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Punjab had already taken steps to set up the state-level Disaster Management Authority.

"But much more remains to be done as several other states have to be persuaded to have such state-level authorities, besides constituting district-level authorities so that disasters in future were handled with ease by implementing the plans," he said

Patil said the Indian Government was not going to stop with the setting up of the national level body.

'We would also like to cooperate with our neighbouring countries like Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh and all other SAARC nations in dealing with matters relating to disaster," he said.

Stressing that pre-disaster management was more crucial as compared to the post-disaster management, the Union Minister said if such authorities were set up in cooperation with all SAARC countries, it would pave the way for uniting all the countries in the world in disaster management concept.