With entire families and a large number of people of two villages getting wiped out in the Wayanad landslides, the government machinery has been having a hard time preparing the list of missing persons.
The district administration, along with the Police, Labour, and Health departments, panchayat, school authorities, anganwadi workers, ASHA workers, and people’s representatives have now prepared a draft list of missing persons, which could go a long way in aiding the search operations as well as in the rehabilitation activities there.
Assistant Collector S. Gautham Raj led the activities for the preparation of the draft list, which began with the collection of ration card details in Wards 10, 11 and 12 of Meppadi panchayat. The details of the children were collected from the Government Vocational Higher Secondary School at Vellarmala, Lower Primary School at Mundakkai, and the Integrated Child Development Services.
The details of migrant workers were collected from the labour officer. People’s representatives, ASHA workers, block-level officers, and anganwadi workers went through the documents in the panchayat office for a whole day.
The data gathered from all the sources were collated along with the information from the District Disaster Management Authority call centre. The names of those who were already in the camps and those whose bodies were recovered were removed from the list.
The Economic and Statistics Department, National Informatics Centre, and the IT mission were also part of the activities to prepare the list. After several rounds of cleaning up, the list has 130 names, with the Assistant Collector estimating 90-95% accuracy in the data.
Relatives and public can pass on information regarding missing persons to the district administration (contact - 8078409770). The list will be made available on the website https://wayanad.gov.in/.
