Four Sindh districts declared to be disaster-prone

KARACHI: The Sindh government has declared four districts to be “disaster prone areas” and has asked local organisations to work with foreign contributors in efforts to minimise damage caused in the areas by natural calamities such as drought, desertification, cyclones, earthquakes and tsunamis, Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) chairman Ghulam Ali Shah Pasha said at a seminar organised by the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF) on Tuesday.

The government has also decided to develop a new city in Thatta district, where the fisheries will be provided with incentives to develop their sector, Pasha added.

Thatta, Badin, Tharparkar and Dadu have been chosen as models for development work, which will be replicated in other districts to protect local communities against natural hazards in the future, said Pasha, while highlighting the importance of such projects following the recent destruction inflicted by Cyclone Phet.

“Earlier, Sindh’s coastal areas were the only ones declared as prone to disaster. It now seems as if the entire country has been declared as prone to disaster,” said PFF chairperson Mohammed Ali Shah. He was of the belief that the government needs to take the initiative by establishing an autonomous disaster prevention body which should be allocated a proper budget to work for disaster management.

The local communities refused to leave their settlements and move to camps amid warnings of an approaching cyclone because they have stopped trusting the government, said Gulab Shah from Thatta and Noor Mohammed Thaimur from Jatti, who believed that the government needs to earn people’s trust in efforts to protect the local communities.

“Better coordination between the government, the people and civil society organisations can lead to better planning and effective disaster prevention,” said Connor Kelly of the Trocaire Pakistan, who was of the view that the observations and experiences of the people are a good way to gauge their problems and address them. Kelly believed that this is an essential part of dealing with disasters and hoped that the government and organisations will design a more effective strategy to deal with such problems in the future.

While Pasha admitted that there was a lack of coordination between the government and community representatives regarding disaster mitigation, he believed that the government had “learnt its lesson” after Cyclone Phet.

“All organisations, working on disaster management, played a key role in averting losses. Their efforts will help strengthen coordination in the future,” Pasha added.

When asked why international organisations were stopped from working in the areas affected by Phet, Pasha said that the government had realised that it could meet the post-cyclone challenges with its own funding. The government will seek the international community’s help when needed, he added.

“All stakeholders in civil society need to play their role to avert the threats posed by natural hazards,” said Metrological Department chief meteorologist Mohammed Riaz, who added that the system of identifying natural disasters had improved with the establishment of warning centres in districts as well as training and technological advancements in the field of meteorology. Saddiqa Sallahudin of the Indus Resource Centre, Waseem Ahmed of the Interactive Resource Centre, Azmat Qazi of the Action Aid Pakistan, Mohammed Ahsan of the Rural Development Programme (RDP), Lala Neelum, Saeed Baloch and Hussain Jarwar also spoke on the occasion.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 30^th,  2010.