KL Report

SRINAGAR

Sr. Vice President, KCC&I Mushtaq Ahmad Wani Saturday attended the meeting called by the governor NN. Vohra to review the relief and rehabilitation measures undertaken by the State and Central Governments in the valley.

According to a statement Mushtaq expressed his thanks for having been provided the opportunity to the KCC&I to bring to the kind notice of the Governor some post flood problems that the flood affected people in general and the trader community in particular are faced with.

“We understand and appreciate that the district administration has been making all efforts 24 x 7 to help mitigate the hardships of the flood sufferers,” Mushtaq said in the meeting. He added “the facts, figures and details of the damages/losses, infrastructural, economic and all, are already before the governor and we believe necessary steps have been initiated to speed up the process of reaching the required measure of relief /rehabilitation to the sufferers.”

Mushtaq told in the meeting while a large number of people lost their houses and household thousands of  trader community besides their residential houses lost their business establishments also.

“Most of them did not have the insurance cover against such calamity as the devastating floods that hit them hard,” Mushtaq said in the meeting adding “we brought the plight faced by such traders to the notice of the Divisional Commissioner, Kashmir in a meeting in September when almost half of the Srinagar city was still under water he sought the help of Kashmir Chamber of Commerce in preparing a list of such shop keepers and traders who were left high and dry having nothing to bank upon and revive their business a reasonable amount of ex-gratia may be considered in favour of shopkeepers and  trading establishments.”

Mushtaq requested for grant of immediate relief to such shop keepers and other members of the trader community.

He appreciated the long awaited review of the relief and rehabilitation measures being undertaken by the State and Central Government in the aftermath of the September Floods.

“The major brunt of the flood was borne by the business community with the main commercial markets almost wiped out,” Mushtaq informed the governor. He added that the indirect impact of the flood on the economy was also massive which left no one unaffected.

“From the industrialist in Samba and Bari Brahamna to the Hotelier in Gulmarg and Pahalgam, the business community of the State has been severely impacted by the floods,” Mushtaq said.

He said that the preliminary assessments of the business community and the State Government, estimated the primary losses to be around Rupees One Lac Crore.

“Based on the various empirical studies conducted by premier organizations like the World Bank and the ADB, the secondary losses in such disasters are estimated to be around 2.5 times the primary figure,” Mushtaq said.

Mushtaq demanded that apparently a multi pronged recovery and rehabilitation effort on a massive scale is required for putting the economy back on track with sector specific measures.

“Adequate short, medium and long term measures need to be put into place. Although the short term relief and rehabilitation measures undertaken by the State and Central Government so far have not been satisfactory we hope that now there would be a change in the approach which would be more in line with the optimistic attitude displayed by the  Prime Minister and the Union Minister for Finance in the Economic Times Global Business Summit,” he said.

Mushtaq also listed some immediate demands before the governor including providing ex-gratia for reconstruction, ensuring regular power supply and remission of charges for at least six months, re-building permission for damaged houses, grant of income tax holiday, extention in the date of filing of Vat returns, grant of relief/ ex-gratia for damages/losses and measures for recovery of tourism.

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