By Reporter
Adaptation of better approaches to risk and disaster management is crucial in urban settlements.
Kisumu County Chief Officer for Communication, Special Programs and Public Affairs, Mr. Timothy Nyakwamba said the County and City face a number of disasters such as flooding, fire outbreaks, spread of, traffic related accidents, heatwave and environmental degradation which needs urgent solution.
Kajwang spoke during the closing of a capacity building workshop titled “Urban Risk-Informed Development Planning and Making Cities Resilient ” said the county needs to adopt better approaches to disaster risk management.
This, he said necessary in order to improve on the resilience of the community which are at risk to disasters.
“The Urban Resilience scorecard tool will enable us to carry out self-assessment on the adequacy of the system we are operating,” he said.
Mr. Felix Mutua, a consultant with the United Nations Development Program said they are presently strengthening Urban Resilience to emerging disaster and climate risks within the County through improved access to actionable disaster and climate risk for the city governments as well as strengthening Urban risk governance through enhanced engagement of diverse sectors and stakeholders.
He said they have enhanced preparedness and emergency management’s capacity through knowledge networking and peer learning which includes capacity development of nodal agencies and regional NGOs.
“Our objective is for comprehensive review and update of climate risks profile for Kisumu through updated climate risk profile and Web/mobile portal and climate risk date” he said.
The workshop was organized by the County Government of Kisumu, GIZ-Resilience Initiative Africa (RIA), and United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
