Disaster preparedness and emergency response policy and administration

The spectre of drought is already hanging over a Mandalay township, where villagers are being forced to pay K50,000 per load of water as their wells dry up. Taungtha township, Mandalay Region, has been facing water shortages as nearby lakes and wells go dry, said Ko ...

Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc directed the south-central region and Central Highlands to take measures to prevent droughts at a meeting with local authorities in Ninh Thuan province on 22 February. He urged the localities to examine water reservoirs and build plans for water usage, ...

The number of fires in Cambodia increased by 14.7 per cent in 2015 compared to the previous year, killing 35 people and consuming almost 600 homes. Electrical malfunctions were the leading cause of fires, accounting for 47 per cent of all fire incidents, with carelessness the ...

More severe drought is expected to hit Thailand between March and April, as authorities have already declared 11 provinces disaster zones due to water scarcity. State agencies are now regulating water more carefully and Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has ordered the 1st Army, which oversees the central ...

The United Nations World Food Programme will support flood-affected people in Chin State with 500 tonnes of rice, as they continue to struggle after landslides and flood waters ravaged swathes of land in the country’s poorest state last year. More than 9 million people were affected ...

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has blamed past policies that heavily promoted cash crops as a root cause of floods and drought. Commenting in the latest government’s newsletter, Gen Prayut said growing cash crops without controls leads to the destruction of forests and watershed areas, and even affects ...

As a country lodged on some of the most seismically active faults during what scientists suggest may be a particularly active period, Myanmar is boosting its ability to predict earthquakes. New digital seismographs will be set up in five cities across the country by the end ...

In a year of disastrous floods, the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation accounted for more than 62 percent of total emergency expenditure, parliament heard on 21 January. Yet barely over one-tenth of the K100 billion emergency fund under the president’s control was utilised. The President’s Office ...

Seismologists are keeping a close eye on a series of small earthquakes shaking Yangon, with the Myanmar Earthquake Committee suspecting they are aftershocks of a larger jolt that occurred on the evening of 12 January, blacking out wide areas of the city. That quake, widely felt ...

Donor aid to villages afflicted by the July-August flooding is just a lucky dip, say angry residents. They blame “sloppy” out-of-town NGOs and ill-equipped local authorities for directing money – sometimes more than once – to some villages while completely neglecting others. Donors themselves say villagers ...