National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Chairman Lieutenant General Inam Haider Malik has stated that the country's newly redesigned overall National Disaster Preparedness and Response framework sought to transform from a reactive to a more proactive mode to enable its capacities to handle recurrent catastrophes.

He was speaking at a plenary session at the International Climate Resilient Pakistan Conference co-hosted by the government of Pakistan and the United Nations in Geneva, where he described Pakistan's efforts to create a technologically advanced National Preparedness and Response System.

Lieutenant General Malik said the NDMA serves as the national coordinator for national efforts on disaster management and forecasting. The NDMA has not only conducted a critical review of all its archived experiences during the recent floods, but is also looking forward to learning from it and demonstrating the same resilience and resolve as demonstrated by the country and the Pakistani nation during these floods, he added.

The NDMA chairman stated that the meaning and impact of disasters and emergencies vary across differently enabled economies of the world. Pakistan, while it passes through a crucial stage of recovery from the most recent floods, also gets ready for the recurrence of its kind in the next foreseeable future, he added.

He emphasised that because scientific predictions can indicate that similar floods will occur again in the future, it is much more important for the authority to be ready to manage many disasters at once in addition to preparing for the next one that is imminent. He said, "Now this will entail a high task for national preparedness."

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-WealthPk