Care Malawi humanitarian assistance programmes manager Burnnet Khulumbo says the flood trigger statement and anticipatory action plan will help to avert the impact of disasters in Nsanje and Chikwawa districts.
He said this on Tuesday in Chikwawa when the organisation hosted a two-day technical workshop to finalise the flood trigger statement and anticipatory action plan for the two districts.
| Wisdom Chirombo
Khulumbo said the initiative seeks to enable partners to take proactive steps ahead of predicted hazards, preventing or reducing acute humanitarian impacts before they fully unfold.
He said: “Floods remain one of the most recurrent and devastating hazards in Malawi, particularly in the Shire Valley. Therefore, this workshop will review and validate the flood trigger statement, which specifies the forecast thresholds that will activate anticipatory actions.”
Department of Disaster Management Affairs principal disaster preparedness officer Zione Viyazyi said there are no major gaps currently but there is need for more localised forecasting capacity to trigger area-specific early actions for councils such as Nsanje, Chikwawa and Phalombe.
“We have made a good progress at the national level in piloting and integrating anticipatory action into disaster risk reduction efforts. A National Anticipatory Action Framework was drafted to institutionalise the anticipatory action into national policy,” she said.
On his part, Churches Aid in Relief and Development (Card) resilience officer Michael Mwale said it was time the country moved from preparing for disasters at the higher level to involving the grassroots.
“We expect this workshop to help stakeholders finalise a trigger statement and action plan ready for operationalisation,” he said.
Care Malawi in conjunction with Card and Eagles Relief and Development is implementing Anticipatory Humanitarian Action Facility Project with funding from WeltHungerHlife.
Card is implementing the project in Nsanje while Eagles Relief and Development is running it in Chikwawa.
