As Maharashtra braces itself for the cyclonic storm, over 21,000 residents of 22 villages in the Palghar district are to be evacuated ahead of the Nisarga which is likely to hit the coast on June 3, 2020. Thousands of villagers from Vasai, Palghar, Dahanu and Talasari talukas, which are likely to be affected by the Nisarga, have been evacuated to safer places,
In the wake of cyclone Nisarga, likely to affect services in Maharashtra including Mumbai, Daman, Diu, and Gujarat, the telecom companies are coordinating their preparations with the DoT HQ in Delhi and with the local DoT control centres in these service areas. The efforts are in full swing to implement steps to ensure Business Continuity Planning (BCP) as part of the disaster management measures in these areas. There are also teams from NDRF that have been deployed in these areas to make sure that they are able to provide assistance wherever needed.
During the cyclone, it is also expected that there will be power cuts.BMC had already introduced hospitals to be prepared for such a scenario. It is likely that mobile networks and ISPs may get impacted due to Cyclone Nisarga. DoT already had taken stock of the situation and asked telecos and ISPs to make sure that things continue to run smoothly in the impacted areas.
Today, Rajan S Mathews, DG, COAI has also shared a statement to this tunes. The statement reads, "To ensure connectivity in the areas likely to be hit by a cyclone, telcos are coordinating with OEMs and tower companies and have made joint teams in the field to attend to any outage. Operators and tower companies are keeping available key spare parts, fuel and important equipment like generators, antennas, cables, microwave radio, etc. for use in times of emergency. Key locations for diesel stocking have been identified for speedy and priority access to fuel and requests have been made to relevant authorities for electric supply on priority".
Since the country is also battling with Coronavirus and with the lockdown still in place in some parts, there might be restrictions in terms of movements. In this regards, Rajan S Mathews, DG, COAI has requested for a critical help. In the statement he has mentioned, "A critical help that has been requested from the local administration is the permissions for inter-state movement of field teams where there are still restrictions due to Covid-19, for e.g. Gujarat to Daman. Also, teams have been geared up for repair and restoration of optical fibre cuts and tower damages".
He further mentioned, "Intra Circle Roaming arrangements to enable any subscriber to latch on to any working network are being instituted. Close monitoring of the networks is being done both by telcos and infrastructure providers to enable timely identification and restoration of any outages that take place. The industry is also prepared with 'cell on wheels' to maintain network operations in case any existing telecom infrastructure gets damaged. DoT and its field offices are working closely with industry to make joint efforts for coordination with NDRF and the local administration."
People from across Mumbai Metropolitan Area (MMR), have already started complaining of internet issues and electricity outages. Hope the same is restored in little while.
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