State minister: Bangladesh will be an earthquake resilient country

State Minister for Disaster Management and Relief Dr Md Enamur Rahman has said Bangladesh is all prepared to become an earthquake resilient country in the future.

He made this remark in an opening ceremony of a workshop titled "Simulation based logistic gap analysis workshop," jointly organized by Bangladeshi Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief, and World Food Programme (WFP) at the Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel in Dhaka on Tuesday.

The minister said: " Japan made all their structures and buildings earthquake resilient within 30 years of the Fukushima earthquake. We have met Japan International Cooperative Agency (JICA) in this regard, and they promised to help us in transforming all Bangladeshi structures and buildings to make them earthquake resilient, within the next 50 years. "

"I told them the sooner, the better.  Therefore, Japan agreed to provide us loans with low interest rates," he said.

The minister said the government is set to attribute higher importance to earthquake risk-management through better preparedness ,covering structural and non-structural aspects, along with effective response mechanism for resilience.

“Structural aspects of preparedness can save lives, time, and money. Recent studies show that supply chains account for an average of 73% humanitarian response costs,” he added.

Md Shah Kamal, Senior Secretary of Disaster Management and Relief, presided over the meeting while Richard Regan,Country Director of WFP, was the special guest.

Shah kamal said: “We are not well prepared if there is any earthquake emergency, as we have no past experience. So we need preparedness and have to fix plans in individual, organizational and societal levels to bring about changes as a whole ."

Officials from different ministries, authorities, departments and organizations were present in the program along with Alpha Bah, Deputy Country Director of WFP. 

Martin Keitsch, Preparedness Lead Officer of Global Logistic Cluster, supply chain division of  WFP,  explained through his presentation where gaps might exist and what could be done to reduce the logistic gaps in preparedness process.