Through certification and cooperation to enhanced disaster resilience
Thursday, 04 June 2009 15:37
On June 4, 2009, USAID’s Preparedness and Planning program certified nine municipalities and towns for achieving ‘enhanced disaster resilience,’ in acknowledgment of their progress in improving disaster management capacity at the local level. Michael Harvey, USAID Mission Director, presented certificates to the mayors of the following municipalities: Arilje, Bečej, Medvedja, Sečanj, Sjenica, Vlasotince, Vršac, Žitište and the town of Zrenjanin.
To date, 20 cities and municipalities have been certified for achieving Level 1 ‘Enhanced Disaster Resilience’ status.
USAID’s Preparedness and Planning Program builds a sustainable and systematic approach to local-level disaster management and assists municipalities to meet legal obligations and international standards in disaster management and response and has since 2006 included 60 Serbian municipalities in the program. The certified municipalities have developed and passed the needed documents through municipal assemblies, an integral step towards increasing disaster management capacity in the event of landslides, flesh floods, fires, droughts and environmental incidents which qualified them for Level 1 “Enhanced Disaster Resilience”.
„USAID’s efforts to enhance capacities of local communities to respond to natural and other potential disasters are highly important for the integrated protection and rescue system and complementary to efforts of the Ministry of Interior to create a more coherent administrative structure in this area, that is very important for safety of our citizens” Ivan Baras said, Assistant Head of the Ministry of Interior’s Sector for Protection and Rescue . Mr. Baras also acknowledged the PPES efforts to provide its support in the process of legislation reform, which should more clearly define roles of towns and municipalities in disaster response on the local level. Representatives of the Ministry of Defense closely cooperate with the Ministry of Interior within the inter-ministerial Working Group to develop an integrated disaster management system / Sector for emergency situations, that will integrate all available resources and use them for protection of people and material goods. Branko Jovanovic, Deputy Head of Ministry of Defense’s Department for Emergency Situations recognized importance of cooperation among all relevant stakeholders and added: “Safety is like an air - in normal circumstances no one thinks about it, but as soon as it is gone, we do all we can to get the air, i.e. the safety back.” The Working Group currently works on drafting an umbrella law – Law on Emergency Situations and Civil Protection that will provide the basic framework for organizing the government’s response to civil emergencies.
As an additional support to activities on the local level, the Program has initiated establishment of a Disaster Management Focus Group that gathers the most important actors: representatives of towns and municipalities, experts in relevant fields, Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Defense, Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities (SCTM) and all other actors participating in the public debate related to roles of local governments in reducing disaster risks. During the first Focus Group meeting, hosted by the SCTM, the Focus Group participants agreed that “the major obstacles in rapid and efficient disaster response are unclear roles and responsibilities of institutions on local, regional and national level”.
Such initiatives are highly important for work of the inter-ministerial Working Group that should provide solutions to establish clear organizational structure with defined roles and responsibilities of all relevant actors in disaster management.