THE Third United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai, Japan, in March and in which Malaysia participated, should have helped us gather input to reshape our disaster management agencies to be more effective and efficient to face and manage calamities.
The floods that hit several states last year were a wake-up call to the authorities to re-assess their preparedness to cope with floods.
As a nation, we should have in place a system to anticipate such disasters and be better prepared to cope with them through the formulation of a Disaster Management Policy.
There is a need for the government to focus on strengthening our disaster risk management with government funding, infrastructure and resources to foresee and respond to disasters more adequately.
An early-warning system can make a huge difference between life and death.
Future development plans must include measures and efforts to cover disaster prevention, mitigation, emergency response plan and recovery to tackle floods and calamities, as well as other emerging hazards.
In this regard, we need to learn from the best practices of other countries and to adapt measures that are suitable.
Undoubtedly Japan, a country prone to calamities, will benefit us in terms of the way it manages and deals with the disasters it encounters.
Malaysia should adopt a total-safety culture like Japan, where the people on the spot are the first-responders and what they do and how they act will determine the effectiveness of the rescue-and-relief efforts.
We need to ask if Malaysians are prepared to respond in the event of an emergency?
For example, an early-warning system is effective only if the
people are aware of it and know how to respond once the warning is issued.
My observation is that the majority of Malaysians are not prepared for disasters or emergencies.
The fact is that Malaysia is often regarded as a safe country, unlike others hit by disasters like earthquakes, typhoons, volcanic eruptions and tsunami.
As such, Malaysians are placed in a comfort zone, unlike Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, where the people are in a constant state of alert.
This has probably given rise to a lackadaisical attitude towards safety among Malaysians.
Many have even taken the issue of safety for granted, which is not right and should never be the case
.
Malaysia does encounter floods and fires, and the questions
is, how prepared are we to cope with such disasters when they
occur.
Are there sufficient flood drills, for example, which also cover life-saving techniques, food preparation, mental, physical and emotional preparations?
Organising fire and flood drills must be done annually to prepare Malaysians to cope with a fire or
other emergencies.
Drilling safety into Malaysians must be a way of life and made into a core value and a culture.
Those who have a lackadaisical attitude towards safety must not only change their mentality but also be prepared to change the mentality of others to appreciate safety.
We must never assume that Malaysia is safe from disasters.
We had our fair share of the 2004 tsunami.
With climate change, we may encounter more natural disasters.
n TAN SRI LEE LAM THYE,Chairman, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health