The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) says response to emergency situations should be a collaborative effort in order to quickly mitigate the effects on the victims.
In an interview with on Tuesday in Port Harcourt, Ibarakumo Walson, the South-South Zonal Coordinator of NEMA, said that responses to emergency situations should not be left to NEMA alone.
Walson said although NEMA was statutorily established to respond to emergency situations nationwide, however, response to emergency situations should be everybody’s business to quickly reduce the effects of such disasters.
“We are going out to all the places that are affected by flood with available resources that we have to relieve the flood victims of the stress in their various local government areas.
“There are some local governments that are very responsive to the emergency issues on ground but I don’t want to mention their names but they are very responsive to calls.
“We are calling on agencies and the state government to respond because when emergency happens at community level, the communities respond to the best of their capacity.
“When it is beyond their copping capacity, the next agency they call should be local government, who when the situation is beyond their capacity calls on state government, before the state calls on Federal Government when its beyond their capacity; and not the community or local government councils calling on federal government.
“We keep emphasizing that emergency response is a collaborative work with agencies, everybody should come together to solve the emergency issue in the state,” Walson said.
Most of these places affected have internal displaced camps already, where the internal displaced persons are, and we visits these camps on daily basis.
The Coordinator however, said that the agency was facing challenges in the area of security and child care protection of the victims in their various camps.
“Among the challenges are health care facilities and water supply for their use,” Walson said.
He disclosed that the agency had difficulty to access some areas after carrying out risk assessment that borders on security.
“We need to be assured by the security agents who we carry along to give us safety before we go.
“So it becomes difficult to access some places. Like you know, some of our staff were kidnapped in time past; so we have devised new methods in doing our work that has enabled us to visit about 10 communities in Ahoada East.
“We also visited Nbiama in Ahoada West with plans on ground to visit joinkrama and Akinima,”he said.
Walson also urged community leaders to always keep their communication channels open for quick response to emergency situations when they occur.
