Karachi
The director general of the Provincial Disaster Management Authority, Salman Shah, has emphasised the need for an integrated approach for disaster risk reduction in Sindh.
He was speaking at a consultative workshop on ‘Research Study on Disaster Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment in Sindh’ conducted by Islamic Relief Pakistan on Thursday.
He called for all stakeholders coming onboard and strengthening the authority.
Shah appreciated work of various organisations in the sector, saying they were doing good work but in isolation. The DG said that the authority would provide an umbrella to organisations working in disaster management and assured his all support to them.
Shah maintained that earlier provincial and district management authorities comprised only government officials but after approval of the Sindh chief minister now civil society has been given representation at both provincial and district level.
He lauded the road map developed by Islamic Relief for disaster risk reduction in the province and urged that the government and civil society should work in unison in all phases of disasters.
Centre for Environment and Development Executive Director Nasir Ali Panhwar said, “Sindh faces serious challenges in the form of increasing food insecurity, climate change, droughts, and the declining capacity of provincial social service institutions.”
He deplored that there was also issue of dual intervention by two departments, PDMA and Relief Commissioner in Sindh, which also affected the working because the nature of work is same but approaches were different.
Islamic Relief’s head of the programme Summaya Sajjad said that purpose of the study was to assess the level of engagement at community and institutional level to identify level of efforts and techniques adopted by them. “We also want identify the challenges and issues faced by the government and communities at the time of disaster and
steps communities take to overcome the loss in the identified three districts, Sanghar, Dadu and Thatta.”
A researcher, Sabina Ahmed, while sharing the key finding of her study, said that the impact of disasters was not only on the livelihood, health and living conditions of the people but they also traumatised them by leaving them shattered.
She added that in the drought-hit areas of the specified three districts, ground water has been depleted to 30-40 feet, and there was no easy access to the water source resulting into malnutrition and diseases epidemic.
The researcher informed the gathering that cultivated area has been reduced and tremendous dropout was witnessed in schools.
She revealed that most of the community efforts were found to be centered on response with no real knowledge of community-level initiatives or organically emerging practices for preparedness and mitigation at the local level. “Almost all of the communities visited relied on institutional support for these systems, which made them highly vulnerable due to low probability of recovery and preparedness due to institutional dependency.”
Sabina added that creation of community-led initiatives through capacity-building trainings and development of local institutional structures and mechanisms for community integration will make community more resilient to disasters.
Imran Leghari of UNOCHA, Shumaila of UN Habitat, Raheem Marri of Hands, Fazal Chandio, Wajid Shams Memon, Zaibunisa Mallah, Saleem Jalbani, Yasin Rind and others also spoke.