Senate passes National Disaster Management (Amendment) Act 2017

ISLAMABAD: The Senate on Monday passed the National Disaster Management (Amendment) Act, 2017 making the Act more effective and gender responsive with appropriate financial allocations and state of the art financial institutional disaster management structure at all administrative levels.

The bill aimed at amending the National Disaster Management Act, 2010 was moved by Senator Mian Muhammad Ateeq Shaikh.

Amendment of section 4, Act XXIV of 2010 has been made replacing the words “as and when necessary” with the words “ at least once in a year and follow up report of 6 months.”

Statement of Objects and Reasons says, The National Disaster Management Act, 2010 needs to be improved to make it more comprehensive and gender responsive with appropriate financial allocations and state of the art international disaster management structure at all administrative levels.

NDMA has to undergone a paradigm shift focusing on human rights based approach while central to it are women rights.

In future there is a need to extend shelter, land and livelihood support solely to women adding that gender mainstreaming should become the priority area of work for the NDMA.

“We need to review our commitment to step up our efforts for the rehabilitation of flood affectees with special reference to women and children.

The government should redistribute land to women, especially landless rural women to fulfill their constitutional rights to have access, control and ownership of land.

The government should ensure the restoration of livelihood through provision of agricultural inputs by introducing a comprehensive agriculture rehabilitation package.”

Similarly, the meetings of National Disaster Management Commission should be held at least once in a year in order to perform its important role at national, provincial and district policy level and forward its valuable recommendations in this regard.

The meetings are vital in order to mainstream DRR (disaster risk reduction) at the local level and attempt to harmonize local government laws with the Disaster Management Act.

Pakistan is a disaster prone country “Unspeakable” miseries of the flood affectees were observed during the 2010 floods that were of highest magnitude and wrecked havoc in terms of men and material losses in parts of Sindh.

Around 58 percent people in Pakistan were food insecure adding that the floods 2011 further aggravated the situation to an alarming level.

Unfortunately red tapeism was one of the biggest hurdles to move things forward during the devastated floods. Even the available funds were not being utilized properly because of lack of accountability. There is an acute malnutrition among Pakistani children, which needs to be addressed without further delay.

A new paragragh has been added in section 9, Act XXIV of 2010. (K) to set up efforts for the rehabilitation of disaster affectees’ with special reference to women and children, especially the provision of shelter and livelihood support to be extended to landless rural women, and (1) to ensure the restoration of livelihood through provision of all economic inputs by introducing a comprehensive rehabilitation packages.

Meanwhile, three bills were introduced in the House. They are: “The Islamabad Capital Territory Public Health (Surveillance and Response) Bill, 2018”, “The Disabled Persons (Employment and Rehabilitation) Bill, 2018”, and “The Marriage Functions (Prohibition of Ostentatious Displays and Wasteful Expenses) Bill, 2018.” The chair referred the bills to the concerned standing committees of the House.

The chair also congratulated Senator Syed Shibli Faraz for assuming charge of the leader of the house. He also appreciated the role of outgoing leader of the opposition in the Senate Sherry Rehman for raising image of the House.