Chennai floods damage: No more funds

Chennai: Bad news for those who are yet to receive the December 2015 flood relief, as the state is not in a position to provide the one-time relief of Rs 5,000 owing to financial crunch. According to a highly placed source, the state after getting the central funds during last December and January passed six government orders releasing a sum of Rs 3, 039.24 crore from various sources of funds it had, providing relief and rehabilitation work in flood-hit areas.

The relief and rehabilitation were taken up on war-footing and in Chennai alone Rs 800 crore was distributed covering close to 98 per cent of the flood-hit victims, but currently there is no provision or a policy in place to address the minimal grievances from flood-hit pockets complaining that they are yet to get the flood relief, the informed official source said.

Chennai, Kancheepuram, Tiruvallur and Cuddalore suffered the maximum damage and 90 per cent of the funds were distributed to these northern districts. The revenue department enumerated all the flood-hit areas and it was estimated that 23 lakh persons were rescued across TN.

Accommodations were provided in 7,244 relief camps. All these data had also been tabulated in the state assembly when the opposition parties raised the issue, it was clarified that all the identified flood-hit victims were compensated and as of now there is no provision to conduct a fresh enumeration or there are funds available to the government to compensate, the source added.

Post demonetisation, the state had incurred a loss of Rs 3,000 crore through revenue, registration and transport departments. The Tasmac, for the first time, had recorded a 30 per cent dip in sales. In such a situation, it is not feasible for the government to think about relief, freebies or any new schemes at least for next one year, opined a senior official, who had supervised the relief works taken up by district collectors during December floods.