By EDDY OCHIGBO
The media, environmentalists and stakeholders led by officials of State Emergency Management Agency(SEMA), during the week, successfully concluded a-weeklong monitoring exercise of the ongoing hazard profiling and mapping, being stepped down by the field officers recently trained and posted to all the 23 local government areas of Kaduna state.
The exercise, which is the brain child of the agency, was put together to mitigate possible disasters in the state, particularly at the grassroots level of the state. While in Chikun, Kajuru Local Government Area, Senior Assessment Officer of the agency, Mubarak Zakari explained that the monitoring exercise was going on simultaneously in all the 23 Local Government Areas of the state, adding that the monitoring by all the stakeholders was to ensure that accurate data were collected to facilitate panning and budgeting towards tackling disasters in the state.
“The monitoring is also to address the challenges being faced by field officers to ensure that accurate data collection. The entire exercise is community-driven and meant to get information from the people directly affected by disasters to enable the agency plan appropriately”, Zakari said, expressing satisfaction over the presence of all key stakeholders, including People Living with Disability as well as women.
He revealed that the project was being carried out in collaboration with Nigeria Early Recovery Initiative (NERI) with full funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
On her part, Gloria Kasang Bulus, a leading Environmentalist and a consultant to the project, who monitored Jemma and other neighboring Local Government Areas, expressed delight over the success of the exercise and commended field officers for their commitment and dedication to their primary assignment.
In the same vein, one of the Field Officers, Mr Yusuf Ishaku Goje, who facilitated the exercise in Igabi Local Government Area, commended SEMA for the laudable initiative of ensuring a bottom-top contingency plan against emergencies, revealing that “the most disturbing hazards in the area are banditry and kidnapping”.
Meanwhile, while expressing satisfaction with the exercise so far, in an interview with Correspondents, Executive Secretary of SEMA, Alhaji Abubakar Hassan, revealed that the agency would sill train the field officers on early warning signals and strategies to tackle disasters should they occur in the state.
