HUMANITARIAN organisation, ActionAid Zimbabwe, has said all hands are on deck to ensure the review of the Disaster Risk Management Bill meant to enhance the country’s capacity to deal with disasters.
This comes at a time when Zimbabwe continues to face recurring natural disasters triggered by climate change.
Last year, ActionAid Zimbabwe in partnership with the Department of Civil Protection under the Local Government ministry hosted an all-stakeholder consultative conference to provide a platform to review the Bill and give feedback to the consultant for incorporation.
ActionAid Zimbabwe country director Joy Mabenge said they were tabulating the input made by stakeholders during the recent consultative conference.
“Upon the production of the second draft, ActionAid Zimbabwe, the Department of Civil Protection and the legal department of the ministry will scrutinise the second Bill with a view to ascertaining the extent to which stakeholders’ suggestions have been captured.
“It is a joint effort, in partnership and we believe all of us in this partnership genuinely want to see the review of the Disaster Risk Management Act. The incorporation of stakeholders’ feedback will certainly be done,” he said.
Mabenge said the new law was likely to enhance and broaden Zimbabwe’s capacity to manage disasters in several ways.
“It is expected to revolutionise the way disasters are perceived, managed and resilience building initiatives are implemented across the public and private sectors.
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“In line with the Sendai Framework, this Bill is expected to be broad-based in terms of multi-stakeholder participation in disaster risk management activities.
“This is contrary to the current law where DRR [disaster risk reduction] issues are solely for the government and NGOs, leaving out the private sector, the local authorities, the academia and the communities,” added Mabenge.
He said the multi-stakeholder disaster law would ensure that each stakeholder has a distinct role to play in the disaster risk management process to complement what others were doing from national to local levels.
“The local authorities will now be very key in disaster management instead of them looking up to central government only to spearhead disaster risk management initiatives.
“However, Zimbabwe is traditionally known to produce the best policies and laws yet very bad at implementation. This is another risk we fear getting into after the disaster risk management law is finalised.”
