State Emergency Management Agency(SEMA) and various stakeholders on Wednesday visited flood prone areas within the Kaduna metropolis to plan new ways of mitigating floods in the state.
Maimunatu Abubakar, Executive Secretary of the agency, while leading stakeholders on assessment of the areas said the state government was partnering with stakeholders to ensure that flooding was put under control.
According to her, the collaboration became necessary because of the realisation that the state government could not manage disaster alone.
She said: ‘’We are here to do a holistic assessment, resource mapping, risk analysis and have an overview of preparedness of the state to manage any form of disaster.
“We are trying to mitigate the impacts of both man-made and natural disasters on the people.
‘’We want to help reduce the rate of mortality and morbidity that is always associated with disaster.
“We have done a holistic assessment in areas that are usually worse hit by flood; we believe the state government and stakeholders are doing their best but we can do better.” she said.
“We are going back to the drawing board to do a holistic planning; to ensure that the state is well-prepared to effectively and efficiently respond to any form of emergency disaster”.
” We have been witnessing floods but we want to ensure that we reduce the impact to the bearest minimum.”
“We have been taking some steps ahead of time by doing monthly sanitation to clean our drainage system, flood sensitisation campaign and stakeholders meeting; as part of our proactive efforts to reduce disasters.
Umar Hairau, Director, flood and disaster, Kaduna Environmental Protection Authority(KEPA) assured that with the new initiative floods would be a thing of the past in the state.
“We do not want flood to occur again;we have heard contributions from communities and have seen lapses which we will have meetings with stakeholders to come out with a blueprint on ways to assist the communities on averting floods.”
The News Agency of Nigeria(NAN) reports that present at the tour were the Ministry of Environment, KEPA, Kaduna State Urban Planning Development Agency (KASUPDA), Red cross, fire service and other NGO’s.
The communities visited were Ungwar Romi, Gonin gora, Kamazou, Ungwar rimi, and Tudun wada. (NAN)