Port Blair, Sep 17: A meeting was held in the District Office under the chairmanship of Mrs. Veditha Reddy, IAS, Deputy Commissioner (SA) with officials of Line Departments regarding arrangements being made for the ensuing Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations. Officials from line Departments comprising of A&N Police, Port Management Board, Police Marine Force, APWD, Health Services, Electricity Department and Tourism attended the meeting.
The DC (SA) briefed the officials and informed that the District Office had recently held a meeting with various Committees organising the Ganesh Puja in and around South Andaman and have issued instructions and guidelines to them to be followed strictly for the smooth conduct of the Puja celebrations. She stated that the line Departments should also take necessary steps for smooth conduct of the celebrations starting from inspection of the Puja Pandals with regard to the arrangements being made by the Committee to meet any eventuality with respect to fire, crowd management, traffic congestion and any unlawful activities in and around the pandals. She also issued directions to the concerned Departments to conduct surprise checks in this regard.
She further informed that adequate arrangements are required to be made for the immersion of the Idols and as per precedence to avoid congestion in traffic movement and accordingly, two locations are being allocated for immersion of the idols i.e. Chatham and Jodakalan.
The concerned Departments were issued directions to erect reinforcement at the designated places of immersion of idols on the both sides of the bridges to avoid any untoward incident like toppling of individuals into sea while immersion of idols, provide genset and install focus lights to have good visibility in and around the area, deployment of lifeguards and boats around the vicinity of the designated immersion place, provision of cranes at both the places for assistance in the immersion of idols. She further directed that a Communication Room should be set up at both places with adequate communication equipment and also to provide ambulances with adequate paramedics to meet any eventuality.
