Jammu: Chief Secretary, B B Vyas on Wednesday chaired a meeting here to review the implementation of the guidelines on School Safety Policy, 2016, prepared by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

Commandant General (DGP), Home Guards/Civil Defence & SDRF, J&K, Principal Secretary, Higher Education, Principal Secretary Health & Medical Education, Commissioner/Secretary, PW(R&B), Director Disaster Management, Secretary General, J&K State Red Cross Society and other senior officers attended the meeting.

For effective implementation of the School Safety Policy, 2016, it was informed that the Chief Education Officers (CEOs) of each district have been declared as nodal officers besides steps have been initiated to build the overall capacity of the concerned stakeholders including awareness generation and sensitization in regard to school safety.

 Chief Secretary asked Director Disaster Management to devise a suitable plan of action regarding measures on school safety and disaster preparedness in coordination with the Education Department, SDRF, Fire & Emergency Services and the Red Cross.

Stressing on the need to leverage technology in generating awareness and training of the stakeholders, Chief Secretary advised use of the Edusat system available in various colleges across the state for the purpose.

Chief Secretary emphasised on inclusion of more students and teachers in the one-day training programme of the SDRF, J&K on safety norms against fire, earthquake, floods etc and also the five-day training programmes wherein training is provided to the trainers, who will be later enrolled as volunteers for training others. He asked the Education department to share the list of teachers with the SDRF, J&K for the 5-day training course.

Also the Fire & Emergency Department was asked to share the audit report on fire safety conducted by the department in various schools, health institutions and other critical buildings, with the stakeholders, so that the necessary corrective measures vis-a-vis fire safety are initiated.  

Chief Secretary stressed on ensuring compliance of the school safety guidelines and regular monitoring of implementation on monthly basis. He also emphasized on ensuring that upcoming new school buildings are constructed as per the earthquake resistant building construction guidelines of NDMA besides retrofitting the old ones, wherever, needed.

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