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Gambia: The Disaster Management Concerns
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The Daily Observer (Banjul)
EDITORIAL
7 July 2008
Posted to the web 7 July 2008
Disasters, mainly naturally induced, are common occurrences these days. They are especially predominant at this time of the year, when news of floods, storms, etc, inundate the newsrooms.
In many occasions, the victims are rendered helpless and the impact of their plight is felt afar in the society. The fact that disasters predominantly occur in the heart of the rainy season, when the vulnerable category of people are hard at work on their agricultural activities, makes the devastation in their wake all the more grievous.
As far as natural disasters are concerned, there is little that we can do to prevent them. Prevention is in fact only possible at a rather limited level. Occurrences like flood can, to some extent, be prevented by, for instance, erecting barriers in the form of trees and sandbags.
And, to a greater extent, we can only minimise the effect of natural disasters by putting in place rapid response mechanisms, although our efforts here will be restricted greatly by our lack of access to the scarcely available technology to do that. However, practices like evacuation and relief service provision, such as in the form of creation of shelter will be of great help to that effect.
Over the past two decades, The Gambia has experienced enough calamities to enable it to adapt to the changing situation. The National Disaster Management Committee, under the stewardship of her Excellency, the vice-president, is of course a perfect institution for that, and it has so far proven to be a perfect means of tackling this phenomenon.
The committee members' untiring efforts over the years has been quite conspicuous. Suffice it to say that there is a great need to beware of complaisance. Indeed, there is more room for improvement on the good work of this humanitarian institution.
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The all-encompassing Vision 2020 document indeed takes into account issues related to this. All we would need is a barrage of supportive policy frameworks, reinforced with a renewed flare for practical moves by all stakeholders. The tradition has been that we wait for harm to come our way and we start looking out for help, instead of us pre-empting the occurrence. It has proven counter-productive. Therefore, our approach should change.
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