Having earned global admiration for disaster management, Bangladesh is now focusing on how to reach early warning services to fishermen in the sea.
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Disaster Management and Relief Minster Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya at an international conference in New Delhi on Friday sought regional countries support for the effort.
We are eagerly willing to use the experiences of other countries in this area, he said at the second ministerial conference of Regional Integrated Multi-hazard Early Warning System (RIMES).
The minister highlighted Bangladesh’s disaster response and management programmes.
He said now they were trying to save the lives of thousands of fishermen in the sea by providing early warning services.
Ministers and senior officials from 22 countries including the Maldives, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Seychelles, and Sri Lanka attended the RIMES conference.
Bangladesh formally joined RIMES on March 6, 2012.
The minister said the RIMES and its member countries could assist Bangladesh regarding flooding, flash flood early warning by making data available for forecast and development of decision-support tools by transferring latest improved technologies.
According to Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi, he also highlighted government measures in disaster management and response, particularly using volunteers.
Maya said Bangladesh was recognised as one of the model countries for its community-based volunteer system.
More than 30,000 urban volunteers and 50,000 Cyclone Preparedness Programme (CPP) volunteers have been trained and they are making contributions in disaster situations.
Bangladesh has also developed mobile phone-based systems to send early warnings to the 120 million cell-phone users.
Maya said his government had begun a pilot initiative on how to engage Bangladesh Ansar and Village Defence Party’s (VDP) six million volunteers in flood-prone areas.
He viewed the conference as a very important one for Bangladesh to become aware of the regional mechanism for the establishment and improvement of the capacity of the member states with a broad-based support from regional system.
Here, regional cooperation for sharing real time data and warning communication among the trans-boundary nations are critical to save the lives and livelihood of the millions as well as protecting the hard-earned economic gains, he said.
bdnews24.com