Amaravati, Oct 28 : With severe cyclone Montha in the Bay of Bengal hurtling towards the Andhra Pradesh coast, the state government has introduced a real-time voice alert system in coastal districts.

Andhra Pradesh State Disaster Management Authority (APSDMA) said on Tuesday that, as per Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu's directive to provide cyclone information to the public in various forms, cyclone warnings through real-time voice alerts were introduced on a pilot basis in 26 coastal villages.

Real-time voice alerts for the Montha cyclone warnings are being delivered within minutes in these coastal villages on an experimental basis.

Even in the event of a power outage, a 360-degree horn speaker system provides clear warnings even within a radius of one kilometre. This system will be expanded to more villages, said APSDMA Managing Director Prakhar Jain.

He stated that the state government is at the forefront of using awareness alert broadcasting technology.

People are being alerted from time to time through messages, interactive voice response calls, tom-toms, and field-level officials.

Ministers and top officials of the state government are monitoring the cyclone situation in real-time from the Real Time Governance Society (RTGS) centre at the State Secretariat.

Chief Minister Naidu, who is also visiting the RTGS war room to personally review the situation, said that they were assessing the impact of the cyclone on an hourly basis. He directed officials to continuously provide accurate information to the public to keep them alert.

According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), cyclonic storm Montha over west-central Bay of Bengal has intensified into a severe cyclonic storm and lay centred at 0530 hrs IST of Tuesday about 190 km south-southeast of Machilipatnam, 270 km south-southeast of Kakinada and 340 km south-southwest of Visakhapatnam.

"It is likely to continue to move north-northwestwards and cross Andhra Pradesh coast between Machilipatnam and Kalingapatnam around Kakinada during the evening/night of today, the 28th October, as a severe cyclonic storm with a maximum sustained wind speed of 90-100 kmph gusting to 110 kmph," the IMD said.

/IANS