By Zahiruddin
CHITRAL: In a seminar held by Aga Khan Agency for Habitat (AKAH) here on Thursday, the speakers stressed on the need of making the community resilient to the natural disasters to mitigate the intensity of losses to the life in the aftermath of natural disasters to which Chitral was highly prone.
They said that one hundred and thirty six villages in Chitral were vulnerable to snow avalanches out of which thirty three had been declared to be intensively dangerous while more than a dozen number of villages faced the glacial lake outburst floods.
They stressed the need of maintaining stockpiles in such vulnerable villages were being maintained in ample quantity to make their timely availability to the affected apart from creating general awareness among the masses.
“The phenomenon of climate change poses really and horrendous issue which needed to be tackled and LAPA offered the best possible solution in the form of providing guidelines to the government.
Elaborate sessions with different cross-sections of the civil society to impart training to them on the theme of adapting themselves to the changing scenario in the wake of global warming is the need of the hour”, they said.
It was told that AKAH had maintained stockpiles in 372 different villages which were vulnerable to the natural disasters so that mobilization may be possible to the affected areas within no time and it has trained 2200 volunteers for emergency response out of which 50 percent were women.
Those who spoke on the occasion included Chitral DC Khurshid Alam Mehsud, project director of Chitral University Professor Dr. Badshah Munir Bukhari, regional program manager of AKAH, Muhammad Karam, head of emergency management of AKAH Amir Muhammad and others.
