The National Disaster Management Committee will embark upon a countrywide monitoring and assessment mission to all regional disaster management committees.

According to a press release, the monitoring visit will be led by the Permanent Secretary, Office of the Vice President, Mrs. Fatou Jassey Kuyateh and would begin this Sunday.

The release, issued by the Office of the Vice President, says the visit is designed to assess the work of regional committees and their state of preparedness on all disaster management issues within their respective jurisdictions.

“The country-wide tour is a follow-up to the monitoring visit by the National Disaster Management Committee of the Office of the Vice President to the Kanifing Municipality and in particular the Ebo Town and Jeshwang wards and the donation of significant relief items to their communities,” added the release.

The release went on to state that another important aspect of the visit is to enable the committee assess some of the critical disasters in the regions and to obtain empirical information on the magnitude of the problems and the intervention approaches used at the regional and community levels to address them.

“The Office of the Vice President is fully cognizant of the inadequacy of the traditional ad-hoc approaches to disaster management and it is rightly for this reason that Government sought assistance from the UNDP to develop a comprehensive and holistic disaster management framework focusing on prevention, preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery to development.

“UNDP’s intervention is also designed to integrate disaster risk reduction into the national development and planning processes and the PRSP,” stated the release.