PESHAWAR, Sept 7: University of Peshawar Vice-chancellor Dr Azmat Hayat Khan has said that seeing the growing need for trained and skilled manpower at times of calamities, disaster preparedness and management training has been made mandatory for all the students of the university.

This he announced in the website launching ceremony for the second International Disaster Management Conference 2010, focusing on Good Governance in Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation, to be held in October this year.

The Vice-chancellor said that imparting education about disaster management was the need of the hour and CDPM initiated the country's first ever academic programme about it.

He said that as an educational institution they needed to work closely with other disaster management organisation so as to deliver the needful at times when it was needed most.

Dr Azmat hailed the launching of website about the conference, saying it would disseminate information and highlight the importance of sitting together at this juncture when several disasters were hitting the country one after the other.

He added that they were making disaster management training mandatory for the university students so that they might be able to work in synergy with disaster management authorities when it was required.

The vice-chancellor said that the university intended to make the training as one of the requirement for degree and course completion.

The CDPM director on the occasion said that the aim of gathering disaster management professionals via a conference was to bridge the communication gap amongst the policymakers, disaster managers and academia and researchers.

He said that they wanted to assess the possibility of implementation of various case studies in Pakistan and other parts of the region and analyse how practicing good governance in both disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation could ensure sustainable development. — APP