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MBABANE – NDMA Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Russell Dlamini says preparedness for disasters was still low in Eswatini.

NDMA is the National Disaster Management Agency.

Speaking on the national radio station, Dlamini said the cause of experiencing low disaster preparedness in the country was due to financial challenges.

“Eswatini is still too far from the realisation on how NDMA operates. Once disasters strikes, money must be available to assist those people affected. Money must be available before disasters hit any country. This includes putting the right systems in place, stocking the necessary humanitarian goods as well as the people,” he said.

The CEO said even though in 2015 the country experienced drought, caused by Cyclone Eloise and suffered COVID-19 pandemic, awareness on disasters were high in Eswatini, but it was a different story in as far as preparedness was concerned.

Unfortunate

He added that it was unfortunate that Eswatini always waited for a disaster to take place, followed by long processes which took months before finances were made available. He said because of that, the country always found itself unprepared to deal with disasters.

“We have collaborated with the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Finance in trying to deal with the matter. However, we are still far from reaching the world standard on how to tackle disasters,” he said.

Meanwhile, he said in 2015, during King Mswati III’s visit to Japan, Eswatini joined other countries to come up with a framework to reduce disasters globally. He said it was resolved that such a framework should have start operating from 2015, running up to 2030.

“Priority number one of this framework is to understand the risk. This means we need to know about disasters and their impact after their occurrence,” said Dlamini.

Preparedness

Dlamini further said it was important for every country to know disaster preparedness and how to deal with after effects. He said to know how to deal with the disasters and the effects, collecting of data frequently and periodically was essential.

“This data collection will not be done by NDMA, but the by stakeholders mentioned above on their day-to-day activities for analysis. This is done to find out whether whatever happens does not contribute to disasters. We need to know even the period when those disasters occur,” said Dlamini.

He said the framework was called a Global Risk Framework and that such a framework would look beyond the climatic disasters, droughts and floods, but also help in tackling any other disasters taken for granted in the country.