In what may be viewed as a major development, the State Government has received $ 120 million additional finance approval from the World Bank for the Disaster Recovery Project. A memorandum of understanding to this effect was signed between Uttarakhand Government and World Bank in the national capital on Tuesday.

In the sequence of Uttarakhand Disaster Recovery Project (UDRP) starting with $ 250 million financial requirement, World Bank has agreed to provide additional financing of $ 120 million.

With this extra funding, mainly training facilities of the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and construction of battalion headquarters at Jolly Grant, construction of ultra-modern Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority building, construction of 64 bridges to improve connectivity in Uttarakhand, slope security work on 15 highly sensitive land slide zones and safety work at five places on river banks will be done. All these works are proposed to be completed in the next three years.

The preparations for the project were started one year ago on the instructions of Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat. The work of preparing few DPRs has been done under UDRP. Through medium of PMU, PIU and Regional PIU, the implementation of the project work will be done in coordination with the Public Works Department, Irrigation Department and Police Department under USDMA. The monitoring of the project will be done by a high level committee set up under the chairmanship of the chief secretary.

Initial human resource and regional PIU for the project has been set up and 30 per cent of the contract has been done as per the guidelines of the Department of Economic Affairs.

In the programme organised in New Delhi on Tuesday, Uttarakhand’s disaster management secretary Amit Singh Negi, additional secretary Savin Bansal along with officials of the Centre and World Bank were present.

Notably, after the 2013 disaster in Uttarakhand, the Disaster Management had received assistance of $ 250 million for UDRP from the World Bank and $ 200 million assistance from the Asian Development Bank from Uttarakhand Emergency Assistance Project (UEAP). UEAP has been successfully completed in October 2017 and the UDRP is likely to be completed by June 2019.