To provide appropriate and timely humanitarian assistance to the people affected by natural disasters and accidents, the Punjab government is pondering over introducing a comprehensive relief policy.

Revenue, Rehabilitation and Disaster Management Minister Gurpreet Singh Kangar on Tuesday said a Cabinet sub-committee under the chairmanship of finance minister Punjab has been constituted for this purpose.

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This committee will meet on Wednesday and explore the possibility of bringing a comprehensive relief policy which would cover the victims of all natural disasters and accidents.

After the preliminary meeting on the subject with the officers of his department, Kangar said that in the present scenario, relief is provided to the victims or their kin depending on the nature of exigency, be it riots, road or rail accidents, natural disasters etc.

Different departments facilitate the same as per their departmental policies. In fact, at times, an inadvertent delay occurs in documentation or verification and the release of monetary assistance. Hence, it has been decided to develop a comprehensive relief policy which would cater to rendering relief to the victims of all sorts of disasters or accidents.

He said that modalities of the policy as to what kind of accidents or disasters are to be covered and how to implement the policy would be discussed by the Cabinet Sub-committee and thereafter the work to draft the policy would be initiated.