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| October 12, 2005 | Wednesday | Ramzan 7, 1426 |
Pakistan lacks disaster plan: World Disaster Reduction Day today
ISLAMABAD, Oct 11: The world is celebrating Wednesday the United Nations International Day for Disaster Reduction while Pakistan is fighting the worst disaster in its history.
Pakistan has yet to come up with an integrated disaster management plan for coping with natural calamities.
“We can not stop natural calamities, but we can and must better equip individuals and communities to withstand them. Those most vulnerable to nature’s wrath are usually the poorest, which means that when we reduce poverty, we also reduce vulnerability,”, a senior official told Dawn on condition of anonymity.
Disaster management has never been a priority in our national plans. The Five-Year Plans, since 1957, when the National Economic Council (NEC) approved the final version of the First Five-Year plan, the development paradigm in Pakistan has remained oblivious of the preparedness and management of natural calamities.
The plans did identify the mismanagement and scarcity of water resources, poor health infrastructure, and flood threats at few stages of the planning and implementation during the last three decades. But the proposed strategies and solutions were either relief-driven or event-based without having an integrated disaster management plan, added the official.
An expert on sustainable development, Dr Abid Suleri told Dawn that it was about time that we should learn the lessons from our wrong priorities and policies. Poverty in its all forms reduces the resilience and threatens livelihood strategies of the people by making them more vulnerable to external shocks.
“Let us not just invest but invest in human beings to prevent disasters. Human dimension of development is a must and it should not be confined to few selected human beings only”, he added.
On the World Food Day on October 16, the international community would be reaffirming its commitment to reduce the world’s hunger by half by year 2015. Owing to lack of disaster mitigation and preparedness policies, hunger in Pakistan is bound to increase and 5-7 million earthquake affected communities would have to bear the major brunt, he added.
“Rescue requires preparedness and we were never prepared for any disaster. We witnessed tsunami, Katrina and Rita hurricanes in recent past, thinking that it can never occur to us,” he added.
The difference between natural calamity and disaster is that of planning, preparedness, and having shock absorbers intact.
“It is true there is a limit to which one can avoid a natural calamity. However, with right prioritization, anticipatory planning and political will to act, one can stop a natural calamity turning into major human disaster.
“We (South Asians, in general, and Pakistanis, in particular) as a society believe in reactive planning. Be it in the field of sports (cricket) or in governance, we like to create crisis and then try to do the post-crisis management,” he added.
The ruling class has its own style of post-crisis management. It has put a price tag for every mishap. Instead of investing little money to remove the may-be cause of an accident, our rulers announce monetary compensation (it is extremely cumbersome process to receive that compensation; and sometimes these are just the political announcements that never gets materialised) for the victims/survivors once an accident actually takes place.
“This monetary compensation cannot be a substitute for rescue operation. A rescue operation in mature societies consists of more than just pulling out the dead bodies and picking up the debris”, he added.
Unfortunately, despite attaining the age of 58 years as a country, we are still not mature enough to think beyond pulling out the dead bodies. “We never give attention to preparedness and like to keep the people dependent on external help”.
The official said that the UNDP has proposed a five-year programme to the federal government to be nationally executed by the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) within the structure of the Emergency Relief Cell.
It was in this connection UNDP commissioned a review of disaster management policies and systems in Pakistan. The report was launched in January. The independent reviewers describe Pakistan’s disaster management approach has no long-term, inclusive and coherent institutional arrangements to address disaster issues with a long-term vision.
For instance, the Emergency Relief Cell is mandated to deal only with post-disaster scenarios. Disasters are viewed in isolation from the processes of mainstream development and poverty alleviation planning. Some of the large-scale development projects are bringing new forms of disaster and adding to the vulnerability of at-risk communities.
The Left Bank Outfall Drainage (LBOD) project and link canals are significant examples. There is no dearth of disaster management agencies. However, almost all of them are mandated to focus on post-disaster management.
Some of these agencies include Emergency Relief Cell (ERC), Pakistan Meteorological Department, Federal Flood Commission (FFC), National Crisis Management Cell, Civil Defence, provincial relief departments, provincial irrigation departments, provincial health departments, provincial agriculture and livestock departments, provincial food departments, communication and works, planning and development, armed forces, police, Dams Safety Council, and Suparco.
According to the review report, disaster management bodies in Pakistan lack knowledge about hazard identification, risk assessment and management. The officials of the two important organizations for disaster management i.e. ERC (headed by Cabinet Secretary) and FFC are not given adequate training. Disaster and relief departments remain, under-sourced, untrained, and are not given required importance.
There is no linkage between the work of disaster management, development planning, and environmental management institutions. It is perceived that absence of a central authority for integrated disaster management and lack of coordination within and between disaster related organizations is responsible for ineffective and inefficient disaster management in the country.
The review report further adds that applied disaster management policy sometimes carries strategic biases that are aimed at protecting locations and infrastructure of greater economic, political and strategic significance at the cost of areas and communities with lesser influence and importance. This stood true in the current relief efforts. The grief and sorrow for the losses due to recent earthquake was felt equally for all affected sites, be it in Margalla Towers Islamabad or in Balakot and Azad Kashmir. However, the relief response from government was not the same for both sites. In some areas there were no signs of any relief/rescue operation even after 4-5 days of the tragic earthquake.
One can learn from neighbours. In India “Disaster Risk Management Programme” is set up with the assistance of UNDP, USAID, and European Union. The main goal of this programme is to build capacity of the local community to respond to a natural calamity since the community is invariably the first responder.
Had we concentrated building the shock absorbing capacity of communities, the people waiting in far flung areas for rescue interventions might have been more prepared to help themselves.
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