Over 1 lakh appeals for Rebuild Kerala

Kochi: Various local bodies in the district have received a total of 1,07,000 appeals for flood relief assistance under Rebuild Kerala in one week, when the State government extended the date for submitting appeals to June 30.

 Details of the appeals received in local bodies have been compiled and uploaded in the website of Rebuild Kerala.

District collector S. Suhas has convened a training programme for secretaries of local bodies on Wednesday regarding the follow-up measures to be taken on the appeals.

“Panchayat offices should serve as centres for providing government services to the public in a speedy manner. The public should not be denied of any services for which they have legal rights. And officials should ensure that each one has received the service and the interests of the people are protected,” the collector said while addressing the meeting.

The officials will begin inspecting the households of the applicants on July 8 and the inspection will be completed by July 12. Each official has to inspect 75 houses with 15 houses per day. Daily reports have to be submitted to the panchayat secretary.

Those applications without having ration card number will be kept in pending folder and the secretary has to make an inquiry on this and submit a report.

Appeals of the beneficiaries who already received second installment of the financial assistance, from Rs 1.25 lakh onwards, will not be considered.

 Those who got other kinds of fin-ancial assistance from the government for rebuilding houses are also not eligible.

The extension of the date for submitting appeals for including in the beneficiary list of Rebuild Kerala turned to be a big respite for several flood affected families.

As March 31 was the earlier deadline for filing applications, many affected families were omitted from the list as they couldn’t submit applications in time.