Planned urbanisation stressed for reducing disaster risks

RANGPUR, July 13 (BSS) - Speakers at a workshop here today stressed for planned urbanisation to pave the way for conducting emergency response management systems to reduce risks, damages and losses during natural disasters in the urban areas.

"The extent of damages both in terms of lives and properties can be reduced to the minimum in urban areas through building towns and cities strictly following the building codes and technologies and adequate risk reduction preparedness," they said.

The district administration and Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme (CDMP) of Bangladesh government jointly organised the workshop at the conference room of the Deputy Commissioner in the city.

Deputy Commissioner BM Enamul Haque chaired the workshop titled 'Urban Disaster Risks Reduction Programme' arranged with the assistances of the UKaid, European Union, Norwegian Embassy, Swedish Sida and AusAID.

National Project Director of CDMP-2 (Additional Secretary) Mohammad Abdul Kaiyum attended the workshop as the chief guest while ADC (General) Ruhul Amin Khan and Deputy Secretary of the Disaster Management Bureau (DMB) Yusuf Ali were present as the special guests.

Urban Disaster Risk Reduction Specialist of the CDMP-2 Prof Dr ASM Maksud Kamal and Director of the Fire Service and Civil Defense Major Mahbub demonstrated two keynote presentations using multimedia projectors on various natural disasters.

Learning and Development Specialist of CDMP Dr Mahmudul Islam moderated the workshop participated by 100 officials, experts and representatives of government, semi- government, NGO, voluntary
and educational institutions, public representatives and journalists.

The keynote presenters demonstrated various types of natural
disasters at the national and global levels, provided different
statistics and elaborated the ways and means for reducing
disaster risks in densely populated urban areas.

The workshop also informed statistics of disasters like fire
and road accidents and the losses incurred and causalities during
2010 and 2011 till May last in Rangpur region and at the national
level.

In his speech, the chief guest called upon all concerned for
safe urbanization considering the disaster risks of the future
generations and said that reduction of disasters risks is more
viable than providing relief to the disaster survivals.

"The CDMP has been assessing the risk vulnerability of
different areas and conducting awareness building activities at
the national, regional, local community and personal levels to
reduced disaster risks in the urban areas," he said

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