Human weaknesses behind increasing incidents of natural disaster

Kathmandu / Oct 13: Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa has said human weaknesses were behind growing incidents of natural disaster.

In his address to a program organized by the Ministry and the Nepal Geological Society on the occasion of the International Day for Disaster Reduction, the minister sought the awareness on the part of citizens to mitigate human-induced disasters.

“Disaster cases are going up due to weaknesses, wrong intention and policies of humans,” he said, adding that unsystematic development plans, results of absence of proper transport, housing, and energy-related polices, had caused soil-erosion and deforestation and time had come to realize it and stop such destruction by the State, political parties and from the people-level .

As he said, global warming due to excessive carbon emissions by the developed and industrial nations has increased the risk of climate change and there remained a high need for policy level reforms in such countries to cope with the situation. He took a time to insist on the participation of private sector in the government efforts meant for the management of disaster and reduction of its risk as the government sole efforts taken despite limited resources were not enough to tackle the situation.

“The government needs to invest more and more in the area of disaster management and its needs equal support and cooperation from the private sector as well as combined efforts are necessary to reduce economic and human losses.”

The government is to constitute the Disaster Management Authority soon. According to the Home Minister, the Authority will be formed soon.

Nepal Geological Society chair Dr Kabiraj Poudel said the nation was suffering great human and property losses due to disasters every year. He was of the view of coordination among stakeholders concerned about the effective implementation of measures aimed to manage and minimize its risk.

The data made available by the Ministry reads that since 2071 BS in the country, 8,962 lost their lives to the 2015 ‘April’ earthquake while the number of the injured is 22,302. Similarly, landslides had killed 2,720, leaving around 380 injured; and the State incurred property loss over worth Rs 900 million rupees from such disasters. Likewise, the number of dying from floods in this period is 413 while 217 have gone missing. A total of 59,856 families have been displaced and the disasters had caused the economic loss of around Rs 15 billion. RSS