At the concluding day of a seminar organised by the Confederation of Indian Industries and the Bombay Heritage Society to discuss a disaster management plan for Mumbai, Dr B Shyamla, the director of weather bureau in Mumbai -- whose office monitors the Arabian Sea -- reiterated a usual complaint of MET officials: ``Government agencies just don't take us seriously.''

``Many port officials cannot even understand the meaning and gravity of the emergency signals issued by us. We had forecast an extremely severe cyclone at Kandla and issued a signal of the intensity of eight, but the authorities did not receive it there as many signal towers were malfunctioning,'' Dr Shyamla said.

Describing governmentofficials as `hopeless', she said that they never bothered about the forecasts issued over the weekends.

``If a signal or a warning is issued by the weather bureau on a Friday evening, the officials will find about it only on Monday, when the offices are opened after the weekend break.'' Weather forecasts and heavy rain warnings are issued four times a day and are updated every six hours, she said.

Chief of Civil Defence in Maharashtra and former commissioner of police, Subhash Malhotra, and chief fire officer V V Rao, criticised the politicians for interfering during rescue operations. Terming the presence of politicians, accompanied by a large number of their cronies at the site of a disaster, as `a major problem', Rao said that it disturbed the authorities involved in rescue operations.

Narrating his experience at Killari, the epicentre of the 1993 earthquake which ravaged three districts of Maharashtra, Malhotra said, ``It would have been much easier to work if the politicians were not around allthe time.

Sharad Pawar, the then chief minister, had set an example by staying away from the affected areas....unfortunately nobody learnt from him.''According to Nita Mukherjee, a social scientist, while the steps taken by the state government in formulating a comprehensive disaster management plan were commendable, its success would require excellent co-ordination between the agencies involved in its execution. She advocated the need to compile all data related to past disaster management and make its findings part of the present disaster management plan.

The other participants in the seminar chaired by Additional Chief Secretary K C Srivastava were Commissioner of Police Ronald H Mendonca, Chief Fire Officer V V Rao, Deputy Municipal Commissioner V L Patankar and Mumbai Port Trust chairman A K Mago.