DMC calls for private sector collaboration to up disaster management preparedness

By Shabiya Ali Ahlam
The Disaster Management Centre (DMC) yesterday urged the need for firming up collaboration with the private sector in uplifting the country’s preparedness level as Sri Lanka’s response and action towards environmental adversities remains grim.

Despite the country having faced recurring incidents of droughts and floods, to the extent where the latter resulted in displaced people, a systematic call for action and response is yet to be established.
“Sri Lanka has faced a number floods and droughts and it will continue face extreme climatic events. It is likely that such events will be beyond our preparedness levels and therefore preparedness through partnership is better and needed,” DMC Assistant Director, Preparedness Planning, Nuwan Madawan Arachchi pointed out yesterday.

According to him, the primary avenue, alongside uplifting capacities of the relevant government agencies, is to strengthen partnerships with the private sector which would ensure entities having their own disaster management plan, contributing to the overall national effort.

The DMC is said to be in the midst of finalizing the National Disaster Management Plan which will be released by 2018. The document that will map out plans for the next 13 years, deals largely with the response component.

Highlighting the loopholes in the existing system, the DMC pointed out that Sri Lanka still uses the administrative set up, such as the divisional secretariat, to coordinate disaster management and relief efforts while ideally, just as the neighboring countries, it should be dealt with the political sets up, which are the provincial councils and local authorities.

“Currently what we observe is that the institutions within the political setup are not effectively integrated into the disaster management system. These authorities are somewhat paralyzed. These agencies in the political set up need to be mandated to handle disaster management. If done it will be a lot smoother,” opined Arachchi. He added that although certain agencies within the political setup do extend assistance, they refrain from taking much responsibility.

“In other countries the mayors are the main city planners, but here it is not the case. We have far to go,” he said. Meanwhile, the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) revealed that a baseline survey recently conducted showed that in Sri Lanka only 18 percent capacity building has been facilitated, stressing the urgent need for emergency response and contingency planning.
With the country not having any climate projection for the medium and long term, the ADPC asserted the island nation is in no means ready to deal with surge capacity, which is a disaster is being at a higher magnitude than expected.

The World Bank (WB) in its latest report on ‘Sri Lanka Development Update’ released earlier this month highlighted that for the nation, on average over the long term, annual losses for housing, infrastructure, agriculture, and relief from natural disasters are estimated at Rs.50 billion with the highest annual expected losses from floods (Rs. 32 billion), cyclones or high winds (Rs. 11 billion), droughts (Rs. 5.2 billion) and landslides (Rs. 1.8 billion). This is said to be equivalent to 0.4 percent of GDP or 2.1 percent of government expenditure.

Acknowledging better disaster preparedness and faster response to disaster will have benefits for all levels of society, the WB has stressed it is imperative for Sri Lanka to increase its physical and financial resilience.Just as the DMC, the WB too has opined that there exists a “huge, untapped potential” for corporate sector interventions into disaster risk reduction to enhance national resilience in Sri Lanka.

However, there is no Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policy in Sri Lanka or appropriate policy guidelines on required interventions in disaster risk reduction.  The WB states that such policies would give direction to the corporate sector in Sri Lanka to make a significant contribution to enhancing national resilience.