New Delhi, Nov 23 : India on Monday favoured cementing institutional mechanism to strengthen the disaster response mechanism amongst South Asian countries.
Inaugurating the first “South Asian Annual Disaster Management Exercise” (SAADMEx), Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju appealed to all eight member nations of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to accord high priority and develop better concept of disaster management.
Rijiju said India has taken the lead role in the region by hosting the first SAADMEx as India is the largest nation in this region and also because a lot has been done by India in the field of disaster risk reduction (DRR) in the last 16 months.
Pointing out that South Asia is the most disaster prone region in the world, The Minister said the region may face disasters more frequently in the days to come and hence awareness in the minds of the people has to be created.
“We have to empower people since they would be the ones who are going to face it,” he said.
Rijiju said South Asian nations have much more to do and work out a proper laid down objective for themselves on how to be better prepared to face disasters.
He said any government programme has to incorporate DRR in their framework as a policy matter and announced that Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed by National Institute of Disaster Management with Jawaharlal Nehru University for M. Phil and PhD courses on disaster management.
