Stakeholders Discuss Civil Protection Challenges

Minister Rene Emmanuel Sadi opened a two-day regional colloquium on January 27, 2014 in Yaounde.

Today, the Central African Region is going through difficult times. Armed conflicts as well as natural and man-made disasters in various countries of the continent have resulted in the deaths of thousands of people while causing huge economic and material losses.

It is within this backdrop that an international colloquium addressing the stakes of civil protection in the Central African Region began yesterday January 27 in Yaounde. The Minister of Territorial Administration and Decentralisation, Rene Emmanuel Sadi and the Secretary General of the International Civil Defence Organisation (ICDO) Vladimir Kuvshinov opened the two-day colloquium which gathers over 30 participants from the region.

The goals of the colloquium are to discuss how to improve the activities of civil defence structures and how to raise a more stable financial support to increase the capacity of various national civil defence structures. Vladimir Kuvshinov said conflicts in the region present new challenges and threats that need new tasks in addressing them. That is why the colloquium is a forum for actors in the sub-region to gather and think on how to develop the different national civil protection structures in the Central African Region, put high technologies in the various national civil defence structures while hoping to unify their efforts at the national and international levels in a bid to support the development of various national civil defence structures for the benefit of people and proprieties from natural and man-made disasters.

ICDO Secretary General said today the work of national civil defence structures in the regions should focus on strengthening cooperation between public authorities and private sectors, introduce new forms of training for professional and civilians, build a regional warehouse for the storage of equipment and materials required for emergency assistance as well as concentrate not only on how to respond rapidly to natural and man-made disasters, but also to work to prevent them or limit their impact.

Minister Rene Sadi said Cameroon has already experienced a series of disasters such as flooding in the Far-North Region, the eruption of Mount Cameroon which are all signs that the country does not only need to work on how to prevent natural disasters, but also how to tackle such catastrophes when they occur. The minister said there is much to do in the civil protection sector and with the current working visit of ICDO Secretary General, it will help the ministry review the problems faced in this sector, identify risky zones and above all see how they can tackle disasters which are never imagined. "Government has taken several measures not only to prevent natural disasters, but also to reduce its impact when it happens," Minister Rene Sadi noted.