NEW DELHI: The Central Water Commission (CWC) has not established any flood forecasting system (FFS) in most of the northeastern states, including Meghalaya, which is affected by flash floods almost every year.
Barring Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, none of the other states in the region have FFS, which is crucial for alerting people in remote areas about impending floods.
This was revealed in the latest Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) performance audit report on the Centre’s flood control and management schemes that was tabled in Parliament.
After scrutinising government records, CAG also came to the conclusion that out of the 375 telemetry stations, 222 (59 per cent) were non-operational, which means real-time data was not available from these stations.
The reasons for being non-functional are manifold but some of the worrying reasons are theft of telemetry equipment, and dismantling due to inadequate security arrangements.
CAG also found that the flood forecasting data was calculated after comparing the telemetry data with manually observed data. Strangely, in the case of mismatch between the two sets of data, manual data was adopted.
“CWC did not depend on telemetry data and relied on manual data even after investing in modernisation of telemetry station network for nearly 20 years. This defeated the purpose of establishment of telemetry equipment for meeting the requirement of real-time data collection, its transmission and flood forecast formulation,” the report observed.
Against a target of the Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007-2012) for installation of 219 telemetry stations, 310 base stations and 100 flood forecasting stations, only 56 telemetry stations were installed as of August 2016 and the rest are on ‘work in progress’ mode, the report said.
CAG also noted that flood forecasting was not done in some states due to lack of sanction for the scheme and absence of request from the State Government.
