Landslides: Provisional list of missing persons ready

As entire families and a large number of people from two villages were wiped out in the Wayanad landslides, the government machinery has been struggling to prepare the list of missing persons.

The district administration, in collaboration with the police, labour and health departments, the panchayat, school authorities, anganwadi workers, ASHA workers and people’s representatives, have now prepared a draft list of missing persons, which could go a long way in facilitating search operations as well as rehabilitation activities.

Deputy Collector S. Gautham Raj led the activities for preparing the draft list, which began with collection of ration card information from wards 10, 11 and 12 of Meppadi panchayat. Information on children was collected from Government Vocational Higher Secondary School, Vellarmala, Lower Primary School, Mundakkai and Integrated Child Development Services.

The information about the migrant workers was collected from the labour officer. People’s representatives, ASHA workers, ward workers and anganwadi workers examined the documents at the panchayat office for a whole day.

Data collected from all sources was cross-checked with information from the District Disaster Management Authority call centre. Names of people already in the camps and those whose bodies were recovered were removed from the list.

The Department of Economics and Statistics, the National Informatics Centre and the IT Mission were also involved in the activities to compile the list. After several rounds of cleaning, the list has 130 names, with the Deputy Collector estimating the accuracy of the data to be 90-95 per cent.

Relatives and public can submit information regarding missing persons to the district administration (contact – 8078409770). The list will be available on the website https://wayanad.gov.in/.