Question : AGRO COMMODITY STORAGE FACILITIES

the steps being taken to ensure that each village or groups of villages have flood-level control, earthquake resistant and agro-commodity storage facilities?

Answer given by the minister


MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE (SHRI KANTI LAL BHURIA)

This Ministry is implementing a scheme for construction of rural godowns to meet the requirement of farmers for storing farm produce, agriculture inputs etc. The godowns built under the scheme are required to be structurally sound as per the Central Public Works Deaprtment/State Public Works Department specifications. No special steps have been taken to make them earthquake resistant. However, a National Core Group for Earthquake Mitigation was constituted by the Ministry of Home Affairs and one of the decisions taken was to constitute a committee of experts to draft model building bye laws for Seismic Zone III,IV & V. The Expert Committee recommended amendments in town & country planning legislation, zoning regulation, development control regulations for natural hazard prone areas and model building bye laws for structural safety.

The Report of the Expert Committee was sent to all the State Governments/Union Territory Administrations with the request to set up a committee to go through the recommendations made in the report and adopt them to meet the requirement of the State so as to give effect to a new techno legal regime. Building Material and Technology Promotion Council (BMTPC), under the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India is assigned to assist the States on the subject.