Chandigarh, Sept. 18 -- Punjab Governor Gulab Chand Kataria called for stronger coordination among disaster management agencies and greater involvement of local communities in disaster response.

He was addressing a disaster management workshop bringing together the concerned agencies from across North India.

Kataria told reporters on the sidelines of the event here, "Today, for disaster relief, our states range from Jammu and Kashmir in the north to Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Himachal, and even Punjab, Chandigarh and Haryana. All the agencies working on this are having a two-day workshop. They'll sit down and discuss what to do when a disaster strikes, even before it happens. If we get the word out properly, we can save a lot of people." ...