OPINION> Commentary
|
OPINION> Commentary
|
|
First step to future system
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-06-04 07:57 We should build a sustainable disaster relief system and the reclaiming of tents is just a beginning, says an article in Wuhan Evening Post. The following is an excerpt: The Civil Affairs Bureau of Sichuan Province recently issued an urgent notice on how to improve the work of receiving, managing and reclaiming anti-quake tents. All the distributed tents for quake victims cannot be disposed of by individuals after the use. Instead, they should be collected by the civil affairs departments. After the makeshift houses are completed and able to host quake victims, tents will not be used. It is time for us to think of how to dispose of these tents. Tents can be used for many times and they can be used again and again in other disaster-hit areas in the future. So it is necessary to reclaim these tents used in the Wenchuan quake. Although the whole country is devoted to the anti-quake campaign, we still have not prepared well for a great many things: tents were produced by factories in a rush; anti-epidemic medicines and hygiene equipment were assembled from the reserves of the military forces; the sterile tissues used by rescuers were collected by the charitable entities, together with enterprises. China is a vast country with frequent occurrences of natural disasters. Every natural disaster will pose a challenge for anti-disaster work and disaster management. It would be rather practical for us to establish a sustainable disaster relief system to protect the security of people's lives and of assets and restore the order of production and life. Some Western countries like the United States have developed a set of procedures for disaster relief. These determine how the government organizes the relief work, how the insurers check into the losses, and how disaster relief materials are collected. Once a disaster strikes, related programs will be launched on time to save the victims and send the materials. The professionally trained volunteers spontaneously intervene also in offering psychological comfort. The maximization of the disaster relief efficiency will reduce the disaster-incurred losses to a large extent. Now, we are going to reclaim the tents ever used by victims, which is a wise move. Based on this reclaim of tents, we hope to build a sustainable disaster relief system. (China Daily 06/04/2008 page8) |
