US Ambassador in Dhaka Dan Mozena on Tuesday said the government, military, civil society, media, general populace can engage cohesively and effectively in preparing for and responding to disasters.
“…involving all the players is the key to developing the understanding, the confidence, the trust that is needed,” he said.
Mozena was speaking at the closing ceremony of a 12-day multilateral workshop, titled ‘Multinational Planning Augmentation Team Tempest Express-22 (MPAT-22)’, at a city hotel.
The US envoy said, “No single entity can do it all and coordinating all these players is not easy, but it is critically important, it is essential and it is mandatory.”
He said numerous government ministries and agencies, the military, civil society, the media, volunteers, the general populaces are all essential to preparing for and responding to an earthquake. “The challenge is how to coordinate all these players into a cohesive team.”
Reiterating his remark in the opening session, Mozena said, “We can’t wish away an earthquake; we can’t prevent them from occurring; we can’t make them go someplace else, but we can prepare for them; we can develop the policies, guidelines, standard operating procedures, plans needed to ensure the most effective response possible.”
The US envoy thanked the government of Bangladesh and especially the Armed Forces Division for hosting this exercise and said America could partner with Bangladesh to make this workshop possible.
He named the workshop as ‘Bridging the Ties of Friendship’ saying there could be no better name for this workshop.
“That is what this workshop is all about … bridging the ties of friendship for a purpose, an extremely important purpose … to prepare, to prepare for disaster,” he added.
Mozena said no nation is immune to disaster and mentioned that within recent weeks, America experienced the bomb attack at the Boston Marathon and the horrible industrial accident at a fertiliser plant in Texas.
“America certainly knows disaster. Each country in this room knows disaster. Bangladesh, too, knows disaster. The nation still reels from the April 24 disaster in nearby Savar, where the Rana Plaza building collapsed, killing over 1200 people … we still grieve for the victims and their families. And as we gather here, a cyclone is churning its way up the Bay of Bengal with unknown consequences for Bangladesh, Myanmar and India.”
Disaster Management and Relief Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali and Principal Staff Officer, Lt Gen Abu Belal Mohammad Shaiful Haque were also present.
Source: UNB Connect
