With the heat wave showing no sign of relenting in western Odisha, the State government on Tuesday extended school vacation by another six days.
“According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the situation is likely to prevail in various parts of the State with severe heat wave condition at one or two places during the next seven days. Keeping this in view, the government has decided to extend closure of schools up to April 26,” said Special Relief Commissioner Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra here on Tuesday.
Earlier, schools were closed from April 12 to April 20.
According to Bhubaneswar Meteorological centre, daytime temperature remained above 42 degrees Celsius at 17 places. Sundargarh recorded the highest at 46 degrees followed by Hirakud (44.6), Jharsuguda, Bhawanipatna and Titlagarh (44.5) and Sonepur (44.3). Out of the 17 stations, 10 places recorded temperature of 44 degrees C and above.
Reviewing a high level meeting over the scarcity of drinking water, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik directed the administration to make efforts to ensure water supply both in rural and urban areas.
According to SRC, as many as 506 tankers have been engaged and 973 plastic tanks have been placed to meet the requirement of water supply in urban areas.
“Apart from 77 pending complaints, 293 new complaints were received on Tuesday. Out of these, 222 were attended and the defunct hand pump tube wells were repaired. There are 32,898 hand pump tube wells and 25,092 stand posts in working condition in the urban areas,” said Mr. Mohapatra.
While 411 tankers have been engaged to meet the requirement of water supply in rural areas, 740 mobile vans have been deployed for taking up repair of defunct tube wells and rural piped water supply projects.
Meanwhile, the State government had received reports of 53 suspected sunstroke deaths in the State.
PTI adds:
The State government in its MDM steering committee meeting, chaired by Chief Secretary A. P. Padhi, decided to continue the mid-day meal scheme in 27 drought-affected districts. For this, the State government would spend Rs.81 crore towards the scheme to be continued during the summer holidays in 36,000 schools, said MDM State nodal officer Gangadhar Sahu.
Mr. Sahu said this time in 2016-17 fiscal, a total amount of Rs.975 crore is required to run the MDM in schools. Both the Centre and the State will have 60:40 share in the MDM scheme, he said.
