LILONGWE-(MaraviPost)-The country’s Civil Society Network on Climate Change (CISONECC) and Parliamentary Committee on Natural Resources this week expressed worrisome over delays in tabling and passing of Disaster Risk Management (DRM) Draft Bill into law.

The two bodies have argued that the delays put the sector into awkward path of failing to respond to disaster with adhoc approach.

Parliamentary Committee on Natural Resources Chairperson Werani Chilenga told CISONECC’ stakeholders conference Mponera in Dowa that the bill’ stall blame should be placed on Office of President and Cabinet (OPC) which has no interest in pushing the bill to Parliament.

Chilenga therefore demanded the removal of Department of Disaster and Management (DoDMA) from OPC to be placed at Ministry of Forestry and Natural Resources for effective operation of its duty mandate.

“Since 2014 the bill has been up and running till now. This is despite numerous reviews to fine-tune the bill but the OPC has frustrated all the efforts. We want DoDMA to be out of OPC where resources are being abused. DoDMA must belong to its parent ministry of natural resources for its effective duty mandate,” says Chilenga.

Julius Ng’oma CISONECC’s National Coordinator echoed on the same saying that DoDMA split from OPC will have a stand alone allocation in the national budget.

Ng’oma observes that DoDMA has been used as conduit of diverting resources from authorities as it get unforeseen vote in the national budget.

He however said the tabling of the DRM) Draft Bill will give clear mandate of the DoDMA on risk disaster management than then the old 1991 Disaster Act which was put in place to respond to Phalombe disaster.

“The current bill has component of financing, budgeting, insurance and preparedness for disasters of any kind which will help many unlike the old law of 1991. We think DoDMA must be removed from OPC whic is preoccupied with state matters forsaking disasters.

‘As we stand now, no ministry is responsible for DoDMA apart from OPC which makes it difficult to set agenda for disaster risk management. If DoDMA is under Ministry of Forestry and Natural Resources, its easy to take to task the responsible minister,” says Ng’oma.

He added, “CISONECC intends to engage the Office of the President and Cabinet through the Minister of Forestry and Natural Resources on the urgency of tabling the Bill. This is in recognition of the fact that parliament cannot pass a Bill that is not tabled. Hence, the need for the Office of the President to urgently facilitate the tabling of the Bill in parliament as was promised in the President’s National Address of October 19, 2020”.

CISONECC with support from Irish Aid through Trocaire is implementing a Resource Rights Programme (RRP) – Climate Advocacy Project (CAP).

Through the project, CISONECC has been engaging representatives of Parliamentary Committees on Budget and Finance and Natural Resources and Climate Change on the urgency of passing the draft Disaster Risk Management (DRM) Bill.

Currently, the bill still remain in OPC despite President Lazarus Chakwera assurance that his leadership push for passing of the bill into law.

The proposed Disaster Risk Management Bill envisages to facilitate the paradigm shift from disaster response to disaster risk management.

This will be done through a robust institutional framework (with technical leadership) for integrating disaster risk reduction into sustainable development and provide adequate multi-stakeholder participation in disaster risk management activities in Malawi.

Hence, the current DRM Bill formulation process is part of a multi-prolonged response to alleviate the economic and humanitarian costs associated with the impact of Climate Change with a longer-term objective to strengthen the institutional and financial capacity of the Government of Malawi (GoM) for multisector disaster and climate risk management.

According to the proposed DRM Bill, this is longer term objective that will be achieved by facilitating the implementation of key policy and institutional reforms that will enable the country to be better prepared for responding to future disaster related emergencies.