Pakistan, UN agree on building resilience in hazard prone areas

Islamabad: The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) have agreed to establish benchmarks for joint ventures to meet common objectives for building resilience and better response mechanism in hazard prone areas.

The understanding to this effect reached during a meeting between Chairman NDMA, Lieutenant General Inam Haider Malik and Head of UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Pakistan, Carlos Geha in Islamabad on Friday.

Speaking on the occasion, the Chairman NDMA said that Pakistan aims to strengthen the community based preparedness regime through national level simulation exercises to mitigate the impact of climate-induced disasters/emergencies in the country.

He said that digitally updated National Emergencies and  Operations Center would be house of collaborative data for early warning system, generating alerts and information-based decision making for proactive management of disaster or emergency in given circumstance. 

The Chairman NDMA also outlined the role of National Institute of Disaster Management to facilitate multi-sectoral researches in the field disaster management and formulate research- driven modules for contingency plans and mock exercises to build national resilience towards climatic hazards.

On this occasion, the head of Head of UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs commended the NDMA’s plan to transform disaster management system in Pakistan and extended his organization’s full support to accomplish these tasks.