New Delhi: More than 660 fisherman remain missing one month after a deadly cyclone battered India’s south coast and parts of neighbouring Sri Lanka, Indian authorities said Wednesday. Cyclone Ockhi has already left a confirmed death toll of more than 250 people from its rampage that started on November 29 in Sri Lanka, where 27 of the dead were reported.
Winds of up to 130 kilometres per hour uprooted trees and damaged electricity and telephone infrastructure as well as tens of thousands of homes.
Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told parliament that 661 fishermen were still missing but did not say whether they were presumed dead.
Four hundred were from Tamil Nadu state and another 261 from Kerala. She said the military and other services had rescued about 845 people up to December 20.
Hundreds of fishermen in mostly rudimentary boats were caught in the deadly cyclone that emerged in the Bay of Bengal and swept over Sri Lanka and south India before entering the Arabian Sea.
There have been allegations that insufficient warnings were given to fishermen.
Relatives of the missing have accused the authorities of not doing enough to find those still unaccounted for. India’s east coast, including major cities like Chennai, is prone to storms that strike each year between April and December.
In 1999 more than 8,000 people were killed when a cyclone battered the eastern state of Orissa.
CentrAL GOVT releases
Rs 133 crore for Kerala
The central team that is touring cyclone hit villages in Kerala to assess the damages on Wednesday sanctioned the first instalment of Rs 133 crore to the state government.
The team, consisting of disaster management experts, led by Vipin Mallik, a top official in the Home Department, has split themselves into two separate teams, with one team touring the districts of Ernakulam, Thrissur, Malappuram and Kozhikode, while Mallik is going around the coastal hamlets in the state capital.
“We have today sanctioned Rs 133 crore, which is part of the Rs 422 crore that the state government had sought first,” Mallik told the media here.
With the body of one more fisherman being recovered off the coast of Kozhikode on Wednesday, the total number of dead has touched 75, while according to the Latin Church authorities, the number of missing is more than 250.
Earlier in the day, a delegation led by state Congress president M M Hassan met Mallik and briefed him about the situation and on the urgent need for the release of funds.
The central team will be in the state till Friday. — AFP/IANS
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