The chairman of the NDMA, Dr Zafar Iqbal Qadir, said that the organistaion is working introducing disaster risk insurance in catastrophe-prone areas. “We have sought the timely release of Rs20 billion funds for disaster preparedness to the relevant quarter,” he told reporters.

This plan will incorporate relocation of the affected population, stockpiling of food and other relief items, boats, ambulances and trained human resources. Dr Qadir said that the World Bank was assisting Pakistan in developing the concept of a disaster safety net. He also pointed out that an amount of Rs5.2 billion had been spent on procuring relief items after the 2011 floods, while the share of the government in compensation provided to the affected families was Rs10 billion.

The chairman said the NDMA has also proposed setting up a disaster risk financing fund managed by corporate leaders. He said the fund would be established with the government’s seed money and would seek contributions from wealthy individuals and institutions. He added that power and petroleum companies would be asked to allocate some share of their corporate responsibility fund for this cause.

Regarding last year’s floods, Dr Qadir said that 100% of those who lost their homes in Sindh and Balochistan had now returned home. He said a minimum of 100,000 houses were reconstructed in Sindh and ten thousand in Balochistan.

On the insurance idea, he said talks were underway with various insurance companies and Swiss Reinsurance Company – one of the world’s largest reinsurance companies – was also on board.

Dr Qadir said work on the first ever disaster risk reduction policy had started and the policy will be ready by April. He said the recorded history of disasters in the last 300 years will be taken into account, adding that they were also identifying which districts were prone to which kind of disaster. He said a disaster response force would be raised after completing these hazard profiles.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 8^th, 2012.