The Federal Capital Territory Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said on Thursday it had concluded hazard mapping of the territory as part of proactive measures to mitigate disasters in Abuja.
Its Director-General, Abass Idriss, made the disclosure when he received the executive council members of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), FCT Council, on a courtesy visit.
He reiterated the commitment of the agency to being more proactive rather than becoming a persistent relief material distributor.
“Within this year, we have been able to do what is called a hazard mapping of the city.
“We are able to know which hazard is more likely in which area which makes it easy for us to handle every case as it comes. We are able to equally know the time these hazards occur in particular areas.
“If we don’t do that, we won’t be able to be proactive and handle every case as it comes.
“We have also carried out vulnerabilities and capacity assessment of the entire city.
“We want to be an agency that will prevent everything preventable and also mitigate.
“It may also interest you to know that this raining season has come and gone without much devastation as we had last year. Thanks to this assessment, we were able to identify the cause of flooding in Lokogoma,” he said.
Idriss said that the FCTA was worried by the healthcare challenge of the more than 36,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) living in the nation’s capital and had commenced provision of free medical care for them.
“Already, two hospitals – Wuse General Hospital and Asokoro General Hospital – have been designated as places for free treatment of IDPs in the FCT.
“We have also trained about 400 women IDPs on soap, pomade and antiseptic making, while another 200 women were also trained on rice padding as part of measures to make them self-reliant.”
He revealed that the FCTA had also enrolled more than 1,000 children living in the IDPs camps into public schools, with uniforms and school fees made available for them.
He commended some NGOs in the FCT for providing books and uniforms for the children.
Earlier, the Chairman of NUJ, FCT Council, Mr Emmanuel Ogbeche, had appealed to the FCT minister, Malam Muhammad Bello, to increase funding for FEMA because of the enormous tasks and responsibilities of the agency.
Ogbeche commended the director-general of FEMA for setting the pace in disaster and post-disaster management in the FCT, and for his commitment to the welfare of residents of the territory. (NAN)
