ISLAMABAD, Feb 11: One dollar investment in disaster preparedness saves 10 dollars in post disaster response.

The revealing statement was made by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Chairman Dr Zafar Iqbal Qadir here on Saturday.

With the next monsoon spell six months ahead, the NDMA is in the process of hammering out a contingency plan to cope with the possible future natural calamities with a view to minimise the losses by focusing on preparedness.

The chairman told Dawn  that a study was currently underway on the appropriate steps to obviate colossal loss by putting in place an apt preparedness framework, making the worst disaster in the past the baseline.

He said the plan will incorporate possible extent of damage in different parts of the country, need for relocation of affected population, timely stockpiling of food and other relief items, boats, ambulances and trained human resource.

The NDMA has sought timely release of Rs20 billion funds for disaster preparedness and a summary to this effect has already been sent to the relevant quarters.

The NDMA chief pointed out that an amount of Rs5.2 billion had been spent on procuring relief items after floods while the share of the government in compensation provided to the affected families was Rs10 billion.

He said the authority was also working on an idea of introducing disaster risk insurance in the catastrophe-prone areas. Talks were underway with various insurance companies and Swiss Reinsurance Company – one of the world’s largest reinsurance companies – was also on board. The World Bank (WB) was assisting Pakistan in developing the concept of disaster safety net.

He said the NDMA has also proposed setting up of a disaster risk financing fund managed by corporate leaders. The fund proposed to be established with government’s seed money would seek contributions from wealthy individuals and institutions. He said the power and petroleum companies would be asked to allocate some share of corporate responsibility fund for this cause of humanity.

Dr Zafar Iqbal said work on the first-ever disaster risk reduction policy was going on and the policy will be ready by April. He said the recorded history of disasters in the last 300 years will be taken into account and district hazard profile was also being prepared for identifying which districts were prone to what kind of disaster.