LIRNEasia holds disaster management seminar

Gayan Kanchana

There is an imminent need to revisit the institutional arrangement for disaster mitigation, response and warning system because serious gaps still exist between practices and policies in effect, as indicated by the recent floods and tsunami alerts, said Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement General Secretary Dr. Vinya Ariyarathna.

He was speaking at a public seminar and forum on disaster mitigation which was organized by LIRNEasia on Wednesday at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute auditorium.

This was the naugural public lecture of LIRNEasia's series of disaster risk reduction events.

"Many recovery issues are often addressed subjectively without scientific basis, and recommended a greater degree of internal and external coordination, information sharing and regulatory mechanism between concerned parties. It needs community level capacity building, arguing against a solely top down approach to disaster risk reduction. Important lesson can be learnt from the communities and the training by the community should be for the community.

"Even though the Disaster Management Policy in the country comprehensively covers both natural and man-made disasters, ineffective implementation mechanisms have prevented us from seeing effective results," he said.

"The flood of May 2010 was an eye opener to many highlighting the gap between policy and practices. Multiple factors that have forced this disaster have emphasized, multi-level, multi-disciplinary approaches to disaster management in the country. Observing a notable drop in attention by Governmental authorities once the floods recede. How can the general public be guaranteed of a non-repetition of the same series of events in the future", he said.

Chartered Insurer and Fellow of the Chartered Insurance Institute of Australia Ainsley Alles said, "Insurance is the final part of risk management, we should first work on mitigating the disaster and then should come to the insurance. We should evaluate the probable risk impacts. There are some events that are not covered by insurance policies. LIRNEasia Chairman/CEO, Dr Rohan Samarajiva chaired the seminar. Meteorology Department Deputy Director S.R. Jayasekara also spoke at the event.