Province wide workshop is underway in Gan

A training workshop on end to end local level early warning system & coastal community resilience is underway in Dhoogas, Gan. The workshop conducted by Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (adpc) in association with Maldives Meteorological Center was inaugurated by Minister of State for Home Affairs Southern Province Mr. Mohamed Naseer. Participants from all the islands & Fuvamulak in South Province are taking part in this workshop. The workshop will last for three days.

Lectures of the workshop are specialists based at adpc headoffice in Bangkok, Thailand. They are Mr. S.H.M. Fakhrudddin and Mr. Atiq Kainan Ahmed. Both the lectures had visited Addu last year and conducted more interactive dialogs with the people.

The workshop is mainly stressing on two main important issues. Firstly an end to end local level early warning system and response, which solely draw attention on how well people are addressed when a hazard hits particular locality and subsequent react from the people. We know Department of Meteorology is very active in terms of publishing and presenting weather related forecasts and foreseen hazards everyday on television and radio stations, but as people take them as routine they do not pay due attention. This is one of the aims of the workshop. Secondly the coastal community resilience is another key issue being addressed at the workshop. For a country like Maldives, resilience towards foreseeable hazard is vital because of inadequate preventative measures on the ground. Our country is a low laying island nation vulnerable to sea level rise and tsunamis.

Though there is absolutely nothing we could do during a calamity, there are measures that could be taken post and pre calamity strike. If there is a team of trained people in each island, they would know how to react to the hazard to minimize the damage on human lives and livelihoods. As Department of Meteorology is active, forecasts will be ascertained duly beforehand a hazard occur. We have seen the devastation caused by the Indian Ocean tsunami in the 2004 and the deadly affects of cyclone in 1991. In the case of 1991 cyclone, which destroyed many houses and out rooted number of trees in Addu, met office were aware of its occurrence but has failed to disseminate it.

Once the workshop is complete we presume participants from the respective islands are fully aware of the significance of early warning systems and coastal community resilience. The knowledge they gain from the workshop would be shared with the community they represent, making the society less volatile to natural calamities, which are “unstoppable” unless man made.

Posted by Hulhudhoo Today on 10:35 PM. Filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Feel free to leave a response