THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that immediate action will be taken for collecting fund for rebuilding Kerala for surviving from the damages due to floods. He said that several teams will be formed consisting ‘Loka Kerala Sabha’ members for collecting fund from nonresidential Indians, and these teams will be led by various ministers.

Money will be collected from cities. Each district will have a center to collect funds and ministers of each district will receive the fund directly. This will be collected between September 13 -15 September. The ministers will directly collect the money from people, organizations and shops, clarified the CM.

A meeting of the departmental heads will be called on September 3 presided over by district collectors. Additional chief secretary will be made in charge of coordinating this meet.

The fund collection will be led by E Chandrasekharan in Kasargode, E P Jayarajan and K K Shailaja in Kannur, Kadannappally Ramachandran in Wayand, T P Ramakrishnan and A K Saseendran in Kozhikode, A K Balan in Palakkad, C Raveendranath and V S Sunil Kumar in Thrissur, A C Moideen in Ernakulam, M M Mani in Idukki, Thomas Isaac in Kottayam, Mathew T Thomas in Pathanamthitta, Mercykkutti Amma in Kollam and Kadakampally Surendran in Thiruvananthapuram. It has also been decided to collect the fund from every schools in the state on September 11.

The chief minister informed that Rs 1026 crore has been received to the CM’s disaster relief fund till August 30. 4, 17,000 people donated the money through online. This is an example for the country itself, said the CM.

It has also been decided to execute several loan schemes for helping small-scale businessmen who have lost everything in floods. Merchants will receive loans worth Rs 10 lakh from banks. Entrepreneurships and Kudumbashree can also avail this facility.

Families affected by floods will receive Rs 1 lakh as loan from banks to buy home appliance. The interest will be paid by the government.  The loans will be given through Kudumbashree to ensure that they are paid back. The government will form a contract with bank consortium for this.

It has also been decided to appoint internationally acclaimed KPMG as the consultant partner of the programme to rebuild Kerala. A high level committee will be appointed for this led by Chief Secretary. The committee will include Dr.V Venu, K R Jyothilal, Tinku Biswal and DGP Loknath Behra.

‘Makaravilakku’ pilgrimage starts on November 17. It is necessary to reconstruct the roads, bridges and buildings before that. Therefore, the charge of reconstruction process will be given to Tata Project Ltd. It has also been decided to collect the data of damages occurred to houses in floods digitally.