Participants
at the recently concluded annual consultative meeting between the National
Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and State Emergency Management Agencies
(SEMAs) ended by advocating for the establishment of Emergency Trust Fund by
state governments to be funded with 1 per cent of internally generated revenue
and 1 per cent of monthly allocation from the Federation Account to the states,
through appropriate legislation, reports ITRealms.
A
communique from the meeting, ITRealms reports, quoted participants saying it
has become necessary due to lack of defined funding sources and allocation
criteria for the SEMAs by state governments resulting to over reliance on NEMA.
They observed that most of SEMAs are either not funded or are inadequately
funded in spite of the enormity of disaster management activities in the
states.
The
participants also observed that most SEMAs were not established by law and
those established by law were not functional and they lacked proper structure
with full complement of departments, units and staff.
The
consultative meeting with SEMAs is organized annually by the NEMA to consider
recent trends of disaster management across the country, update SEMAs on recent
changes in MEMA’s policies and receive updates with a view to strengthening
disaster management at the state level. This year’s meeting was held at the
weekend in Asaba, Delta State.
Earlier, the Director General of NEMA Muhammad Sani Sidi called for
stronger coordination among critical stakeholders especially between the
coordinating agencies at the federal and state levels as effective disaster
management and humanitarian service delivery cannot be achieved by one tier of
government alone.
“Government
institutions, the private sector, local and international organisations and
individual must work together for a nation like ours to meet its objectives of
emergency management, disaster risk reduction and the building of strong
national resilience,” Sani Sidi said.
He
stressed that coordination allow all personnel and agencies involved in
emergency management to work together for enhanced service delivery, saying
that was done with the main goal of saving lives, protection of properties,
critical national assets and infrastructure and the complete restoration of
normalcy in the aftermath of disasters.
Further, ITRealms gathered that participants
at the meeting were made up of executive secretaries/heads of state emergency management
agencies from each state, NEMA zonal coordinators and managements staff.
Uboshe Uboshe/GEE
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