Malawi: Christian Aid highlights importance of disaster preparedness

Source(s): Malawi News Agency
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Mulanje: The Mulanje Chapter of the Christian Aid, a Faith Based international development charity has emphasized the importance of disaster preparedness, suggesting that it must be incorporated as one of the key priorities in the district’s development plans.

District Coordinator for Christian Aid, Chikumbutso Kilembe made the remarks over the weekend during a stakeholders’ meeting with Councilors aimed at sensitizing them on their roles in disaster preparedness and response.

The event came at a time when Mulanje, with other districts that were hit by floods are struggling to recover from the disaster.

“Early warning information if shared and interpreted well to people, effects of disasters can be mitigated as measures might be made in time on how to evacuate prospective victims from the disaster prone areas,” said Kilembe.

He also stressed the need to strengthen people’s ability to stand the effects of disasters such as engaging themselves in activities like village banks.

Chief Administrative Officer for Mulanje District Council, Grey Mkwanda commended Christian Aid for the enlightenment.

He bemoaned the Non-governmental Organizations’ syndrome of responding to disasters only when they affect people in their impact areas and shunning away from others, observing that it had crippled coordination during response as many households failed to access relief aid due to lack of NGO's presence in their areas.

“In the past disaster occurrence we have experienced the worst form of uncoordinated efforts during response mainly because each NGO wanted to respond on to problems in their impact areas while sidelining others, whereby creating gaps in the system,” Mkwanda highlighted.

Mkwanda also indicated that plans were underway to engage the NGOs and their donors to map the way forward on how disaster response should be handled.

Mulanje is one of the districts that were hit by the recent floods, displacing over 12, 000 farm families, killing 20 and washing away over 7300 hectares of crops.

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