WHILE mourning the deaths of more than 57000 peoples in Kashmir and NWFP in the earthquake on October 8, the civil society, the government and the international community are engaged in helping those who survived but lost their every thing from their homes to livelihoods.

The devastating earthquake has also given a wake-up call to Pakistan and its provinces as to how much vulnerable the people’s lives, abodes and livelihoods are due to the absence of any integrated disaster management plan.

The Sindh government has formed a 19-member Disaster Management Committee with Wasim Akhter, Adviser to the CM on Local Government, as chairman. It was certainly timely decision given the fact that Sindh has remained vulnerable to most of the natural hazards.

The province is prone to floods, droughts, earthquake, cyclonic storms and sea erosion in its coastal region. Karachi is also considered as vulnerable to earthquakes and cyclones. Construction of the high –rising buildings in the city without any proper regulation poses threat to the lives of millions of city’s residents.

Sindh has suffered different kinds of disasters. Severe drought periods in 2000 and 2002 affected livelihoods, resulted in human deaths, forced tens of thousands of people to migrate, and killed a large numbers of cattle.

The most recent significant earthquake occurred in 2001, in Sindh (which also hit Gujarat in India) resulting in 12 deaths and affecting thousands of people.

The coastal areas of Sindh are most vulnerable to cyclones. A cyclone in 1965 killed over 1000 people while the most recent cyclone, which hit two districts in southern Sindh in 1999, killed more than 500 and left over 666,000 affected. Economic losses were severe with over 75,000 houses destroyed and crops and agricultural land inundated.

The province has no disaster policy nor plan. There are some outdated laws and rules governing the issues related to disasters of different kinds. Those laws and rules include: Sindh Natural Calamities (Prevention and Relief Act. 1958, District Disaster Relief Plan 1977 and Sindh Local Government Ordinance, 2001.

As a result of outdated, inadequate and flawed legal framework, the \ government fails in providing proper warning, relief and rehabilitation to the affected communities. The Sindh Natural Calamities (Prevention and Relief Act. 1958 has no rules of its own.

West Pakistan National Calamities (Prevention and Relief) Rules 1969 have been adopted with minor changes. The Act covers only the relief measures once the disaster hits any area. There are no provisions for early warning systems, capacity building of the communities and departments with regard to proper disaster prevention.

The Act is also silent on the issues of proper and long- term rehabilitation of the disaster hit areas. Interestingly even in the case of relief, there is only provision of food distribution as the Act does not cover the provision of medicines etc in the disaster relief activities

Similarly, the compensation amount to be paid to any family in the case of loss of life and houses etc is meagre. The loss of livelihood, dislocation, joblessness, injuries and many other losses are not properly covered in the disaster relief package. There are also legal and administrative inconsistencies in relation to disaster response in the local government ordinance. Definition of disaster is limited in scope and it does not include river and sea erosion as a disaster.

Besides, the response of the government departments to the disasters has always been reactive. There has never been proper disaster preparedness at the government level for any kind of disaster. Whenever the disaster comes, the response is marred with the problems of poor coordination among the government departments as well as between the government departments and civil society. The lack of operational and the poor response capacity of the provincial government coupled with the lack of information management systems, skilled human resource and equipments further aggravates the situation.

In such a situation, the decision of constituting a disaster management committee has been the need of hour. But it lacks representation of all the key stakeholders. The committee is basically manned by bureaucrats with little representation to the universities of Sindh.

The matter of the fact is that the understanding of any kind of disaster including its key phases, early warning, disaster preparedness, rescue , relief and rehabilitation is a conglomeration of many subjects including science, community awareness and development, law as well as systematic planning for the rehabilitation. The preparation of any disaster management plan also needs the services of people with variety of knowledge, skill and experiences.

There is a need of integrated disaster management plan by bringing changes in the legal framework as well as preparation of disaster warning systems, evacuation plans, systemic relief plans as well as long term sustainable rehabilitation plans for all the kinds of disasters. This can be possible only with the participation of people having diversity of the experiences including the civil society, political leaders and community representatives besides the bureaucrats, technocrats and scientists.