Disastrous management

In the aftermath of the rare tornado that hit Bara and Parsa on March 31, killing 29 people, injuring over 400, and rendering over 1,000 homeless, the discus­sion over the extreme weather event has ranged from serious to trivial. The tragedy has led many to ask pointed questions about our preparedness to deal with disasters and the overall govern­ment mindset. The savagery of the winds was so unprecedented that some are struggling to find an appropriate name for the disas­ter in Nepali. With or without a name, it would be a mistake to treat this as a one-off extreme weather event.

 

In the past five years, Nepal has been hit by many major disas­ters: the Jure landslide (2014), the Gorkha earthquake (2015), the Bhotekoshi floods (2016), nation­wide floods (2017), the Bhaktapur floods (2018), to name a few, and every new disaster shows more cracks in our system.

 

Disaster mainstreaming has been a major development agen­da for at least a decade now. Both our development partners and the government have spent bil­lions of rupees on training, equip­ment and policy alignment to better prepare for disasters. Given Nepal’s poor ranking on several vulnerability indices, these invest­ments are needed. On a global scale, Nepal ranks fourth, 11th and 13th in terms of vulnerability to climate change, earthquake and flood risks respectively. On an average more than two deaths a day are attributed to disasters, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA). But after every disaster most of us are left scratching our heads as to why those investments have not trans­lated into effective early warning, rescue and relief, and post-disas­ter recovery and reconstruction.

 

Fiefdoms

Rescue and relief are closely guarded fiefdoms of the home ministry. Our system is designed to do some rescue and a lot of relief post-disaster. (Whom the relief actually goes to is a different story—and hence the fight for the turf.) Despite the rhetoric and sleek tweets, the MoHA’s system is not designed for early warning or mitigation. It performs through an antiquated system of an ad-hoc committee of whoever is available in the district. In other words, there is no emphasis on special­ized training and personnel and continuity of services.

 

Given the high turnover of gov­ernment staff, there is lack of cohesion and internalization of standard operating procedures at the district and local level from one year to the next. Disaster risk reduction and preparedness is a highly specialized field. Yet how many of the people put in charge of such critical operations have specialized skills within our gov­ernment system?

 

This is not to say that there is no capacity in the country. Our military and paramilitary organi­zations have shown remarkable progress in their disaster response capacity. The Armed Police Force (APF) effectively responded to the 2018 Bhaktapur floods as they could deploy ample training and stock rescue gears, including rub­ber inflatable flotillas—in collabo­ration with the UNDP and other development partners.

 

In comparison, the civilian side of the administration remains woefully unprepared and unin­terested. Perhaps that is why the government handed over the task of building shelters for the survi­vors of the Bara-Parsa tornado to the national army. Given the fast approaching monsoon, the gov­ernment had little choice.

 

Specialization

But the general lack of interest in building the capacity and the specialization of the civilian side of the administration on disaster preparedness and response is baffling. Take for instance the Disaster Risk Management Act 2017, which was passed nearly a decade after it was first floated (delayed and diluted primarily due to entrenched interests within the home ministry). It has made every attempt to keep the disaster risk reduction and management responsibility within the MoHA structures. As a result, instead of creating an agile agency with spe­cialized staff, there is now anoth­er bureaucratic web weighed down by two additional layers of bureaucracy.

 

The original idea was to cre­ate a nimble National Disaster Management Agency led by a high-powered individual—prefer­ably a cabinet minister. Instead, the Act creates a National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority within the MoHA that reports to an Executive Commit­tee led by the minister, which in turn reports to a council chaired by the prime minister. So, in a nutshell, the Authority is nothing but a secretariat, which in turn presides over another ad-hoc sec­retariat-like structure in the form of district committees. Disaster management is more than just rescue and relief—and clearly it is not a seasonal occupation. While the army and the armed police are there as a last resort, the civilian side needs to get its act together on mitigation and response before another bigger disaster-induced tragedy strikes.