Workshop on disaster risk management held

Vice Chancellor, Punjab University, Professor Dr Mujahid Kamran inaugurated the "Disaster Risk Management" workshop organised by the Department of Geography in collaboration with National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM), here on Monday. Chairman Geography Department, Dr Abdul Ghaffar, Director NIDM, Falak Nawaz, Dr Mansoor Sarwar, Registrar, Dr Muhammad Akhtar, faculty members and a large number of students were also present.
Dr Kamran said disasters are bound to happen but they should be ready to cope with the losses. The Punjab University had done historic relief work for victims of earthquake, flood and IDPs of Swat and it has also established disaster fund. He said that unfortunately they did have experts and their preparations to deal with disasters, were not up to mark.
He appreciated Chairman Dr Abdul Ghaffar for organising this workshop on such an important topic. Director NIDM Falak Nawaz said that the objective of the workshop was to create awareness about minimising the losses as a result of disasters. He said that NIDM would continue to organise such awareness programmes in future. In his inaugural address Dr Abdul Ghaffar said that they could not control disasters and in recent years many earthquakes over 6 magnitude occur which brought Tsunami and floods resulting in mass destruction. The only thing they could do was to minimise the losses by using different techniques and Punjab University's Department of Geography was the pioneer, which started many courses in this regard.