June 2, 2006	Friday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 5, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, June 1: Punjab government has decided to support the proposed National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

Provincial law minister Raja Basharat told Dawn that Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Illahi had accorded his accent to the resolution supporting the establishment of NDMA by the federal government.

The resolution would be placed before the Punjab Assembly in the session starting on June 8 and it is being expected that the provincial legislature would pass the resolution.

Earlier, Punjab was strongly opposed to the idea of federal government undertaking setting up of NDMA and had seen its establishment as conflicting with its plan to set up a similar organisation.

However, subsequent public pressure forced the provincial government to change its mind and endorse NDMA.

Provincial governments, following Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz’s decision to set up National Disaster Management Commission (NDMC) and National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) in February, were asked to get resolutions passed from their respective assemblies in support of a legislative cover for NDMA.

NWFP and Balochistan provincial assemblies have passed resolutions in favour. However, in Sindh, the resolution lying with the assembly secretariat seems to have fallen victim to the coalition politics of the ruling groups.

A representative of Sindh government, at a recent meeting, did not sound very positive about the resolution getting through the assembly soon. NDMA was to function as a structured and strategic agency responsible for policy formulation, information sharing and coordination for the cross-sectoral disaster management programmes. It was also supposed to act as the secretariat to NDMC.

UNDP has made a commitment to meeting part of the investment, while the rest of the amount was to be raised by the government from its own resources or foreign donations. The five- year programme is estimated to cost $16 million, of which $2.5 million has been promised by the UNDP.