Crisis management centre opens

 

Based in Nay Pyi Taw, the National Crisis Management Centre aims to help authorities react more quickly and effectively to emergencies. The EU is also providing training to the centre personnel on how to operate the high-tech facility, which will be linked to others in the region.

"Emergency response is a very complicated thing that needs a lot of coordination between different services. It will be for natural disasters and emergencies, and man-made disasters and emergencies. It has the two angles to it - to try to prevent and to try to cure," Roland Kobia, EU ambassador to Myanmar, told Channel News Asia.

Tackling a crisis efficiently hasn't always been easy for Myanmar, with a population of 60 million people.

When cyclone Nargis hit the country in 2008, the response could have been better managed, according to Kobia.

"There was a bit of a slow reaction to what happened. So I would believe that such a centre, that brings a capability that is already there and who knows how to work together between the different actors, the response to, in this case, a natural disaster, would be much quicker and you would have less loss of lives."

The centre will also operate within the framework of a regional EU-funded project aiming to foster the capacities of ASEAN and its member states in the area of early warning and responses to emergency situations by promoting inter-connectivity of ASEAN crisis centres, the EU said. Based in Jakarta, this regional project will also strengthen the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for humanitarian assistance and disaster management, it said.

Like other Asean countries, Myanmar is vulnerable to the climate change. Among the cyclones affecting Myanmar, Cyclone Nargis in 2008 was the worst, resulting in death toll of tens of thousands of lives.