Mozena for combined efforts to tackle disaster

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 14 May 2013, 07:06 AM
Updated : 14 May 2013, 07:24 AM

The US Ambassador in Dhaka Dan Mozena has pitched for concerted efforts before and after disasters.

"....imagine a cricket or football team on the field with each player doing his own thing with no regard for his teammates" that would be a disaster in its own right,” he said on Tuesday in Dhaka.

The Ambassador was speaking at the closing of the US and Bangladesh joint ‘multinational, inter-agency disaster response workshop’ that focused on earthquake preparedness and planning.

Mozena stressed the need of engaging government, military, civil society, media, and general populace ‘cohesively and effectively’ in preparing for and responding to disasters.
The envoy said involving all was ‘the key’ to developing ‘the understanding, the confidence, and the trust’ needed to engage them during disasters.
As no nation was ‘immune to disaster’, he said, responding to disaster was “a whole of government, whole of society engagement….no single entity can do it all”.
“The challenge is how to coordinate all these players into a cohesive team,” he said.
Organisers say the 10-day long workshop was part of the Multinational Planning Augmentation Team’s (MPAT) regular activities.
This year the workshop was being held in Dhaka, for the first time, where officials of ministries, armed forces and humanitarian organisations of at least 20 countries, mostly in Asia-Pacific region, took part.
They brainstormed and learned from each other to apply the ideas in their home countries, organisers say.

MPAT is a multinational programme, established in Nov 2000 by the Commander of US Pacific Command and the chiefs of defence of various nations in the Asia-Pacific region.

Its goal is to facilitate ‘the rapid and effective’ establishment and augmentation of a multinational force headquarters and other multinational military and civil-military coordination mechanisms.