ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal on Monday announced dissolution of National Flood Response Coordination Centre (NFRCC), hailing its role in mitigating the impact of the recent massive floods.

Speaking at an NFRCC function, the federal minister said flood damages could have been much more, but coordinated efforts helped reduce the impact of the tragedy. Appreciating the NFRCC’s role, the minister said the world was surprised over Pakistan handing of such a huge calamity with less human loss. He said the capability and coordination for disaster management under the umbrella of NFRCC played a key role in helping Pakistan accomplish the gigantic task.

This showed the power of collaboration, he said, adding that “no matter how great a challenge, if we collaborate, we can face every challenge”.

He said that efforts of all three services, provinces, private sector, humanitarian organisations, civil society and friends of Pakistan were positively synergised and they had a huge impact in mitigating the flood losses.

Coordinated efforts helped mitigate flood damages, says minister

He thanked all the people concerned on behalf of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif for the hard work and efforts they had put in during the recent floods.

Mr Ahsan said the NFRCC had been created for the specific purpose of emergency response and it successfully “completed its mission” and was being been dissolved. However, he added, this did not mean the challenge had ended. Challenges were still there and they would be dealt with under a new format and institutional setting with provinces, he explained.

Framework

The federal minister also said that the government had prepared a framework for making the country climate resilient and it would be presented to the international community. He said the country’s economy was already struggling to survive after suffering a loss of more than $30 billion.

He said Pakistan was the most vulnerable country facing the climate change and its principle stand that the countries responsible for global warming should accept their social responsibility and financially help the victim countries had been accepted internationally at the UN’s recently-held climate change conference.

Published in Dawn, December 6th, 2022