Chairman National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Lieutenant General Inam Haider Malik on Tuesday said the country’s overall remodelled National Disaster Preparedness and Response framework was looking for transformation from a reactive mode to a more proactive mode to enable its capacities to tackle recurring catastrophes.
The NDMA Chairman was speaking at a plenary held at the International Climate Resilient Pakistan Conference co-hosted by the government of Pakistan and the United Nations in Geneva, where he presented the country’s endeavours for a tech-driven National Preparedness and Response System.
Lieutenant General Malik said as the National Coordinator for national efforts on disaster management and forecasting, the NDMA not only undertook a critical review of all its archived experiences during the recent floods but was also looking forward to learning from it and demonstrating the same resilience and resolve as demonstrated by the country and Pakistani nation during these floods.
“We understand that disasters and emergencies, mean differently for differently enabled economies of the world and Pakistan while it passes through a critical stage of rehabilitation from the last floods it also gets prepared for the recurrence of its kind in the next foreseeable future,” the NDMA Chairman said.
He underlined that as scientific projections were able to forecast the recurrence of such floods in the next future; so, it made it more imperative for the Authority to not only prepare for rescue and relief of the next one in waiting but also be prepared to handle more than one disasters in simultaneous mode. “Now this will entail a high task on national preparedness,” he added.—APP
