By Ezrah Kashumbusha,
NATIONAL
The Uganda Red Cross Society (URCS) has advised Government to formulate the Disaster Risk Management Bill that will help to guide and prepare the Country to manage disasters.
According to Alex Luganda, speaking during a stakeholders meeting at Imperial Royale Hotel in Kampala said that the law is needed
“We have always seen that when emergencies occur, there are uncoordinated responses and the absence of Law Partly leads to this, absence of a law also leads to the lack of clear commitment in terms of funding and resource allocation” Lugunda revealed
“The Bureaucracies of response and funding caused by lack of law affect victims because if there is an emergency like a landslide in Bududa which has covered three villages with 600,000 families closed up and you have to wait for parliament to debate on supplementary budget to then come back to Ministry of Finance” Lugunda said
He added that the process can’t be done in two days but might take a month when citizens on the ground have been buried by soil and have no food.
Luguanda explained that the importance of disaster risk Management Law is to design a tailor made response to disaster to streamline the handling of funds, relief items and so many other things related to management of disasters.
“Uganda is a signatory to so many regional and international protocols on disaster management and risk reduction but these prescribed different approaches to disaster reduction and the essence of a national Legislation is to harmonize all these protocols and put them into one rule book”
Since 2021 and 2022, the Uganda Red Cross Society continued to engage with parliamentarians to advocate for the National Disaster Risk Management bill through an engagement with Prime Ministers Office and other relevant stakeholders in developing the roadmap for the bill.
These engagements have been part of the Risk Informed Early Action Partnership which brings together stakeholders across Africa to safety from disasters by 2025.
