In December 2010, in the midst of one of the worst flooding disasters to have hit Pakistan, the Strategic Planning Unit successfully lobbied Parliament to ratify the National Disaster Management Commission Act, which in turn authorized a National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) for Pakistan. The NDMA was formally established to manage disaster risk reduction measures and rescue, coordinate relief, through early recovery and finally towards reconstruction and rehabilitation. Effectively, the body was intended to be a one-window operation for disaster management.
Where there is a will there is a way.
General Nadeem Ahmed, the Chairman of the NDMA in 2010, had asked me to join his team six months before the floods of 2010, to create a specific team within NDMA.
The Strategic Planning Unit was tasked to develop necessary strategic thinking for disaster management for formal bureaucrats authorized to lead disaster management and risk reduction. Looking back at my time in the NDMA, the trouble began early, and those issues seemed to have festered and deepened since. The 2010 NDMC Act created the Disaster Management Commission, which included the Prime Minister, the relevant ministers, and provincial chief ministers as an oversight body for NDMA. The implementing authority was supposed to be the NDMA Chairman, and PDMAs and DDMAs. Although the NDMA was meant to be a one-window operation for all disaster management activities, as time went by, multiple actors began to interfere with its operations, and obstructed the one-window mechanism.
I saw this an opportunity to have a strong government authority as a robust partner for the donors who tend to lead the intellectual aspects of disaster management. The NDMA could provide an integrated multi-sectoral approach in its services delivery practices, which could trigger a lot more than disaster risk management in the long term.
Some were very amused at my naïve sense of duty, and sense of public service. I saw it as payback time; many of us had the professional sectoral experience from managing disasters and had technical expertise in the field. It was time to build our public sector bureaucracies to better lead partners, but also deliver to the millions of vulnerable citizens dependent on government systems.
Developing rules of business for the NDMA and the existing ministries at the federal level was a challenge in the messy world of Pakistan’s governance organogram. This was however, a necessary step for NDMA to have authorization to seek assistance from the various ministries to cooperate during various stages of disaster management and for mitigation interventions during peace times. After the 18th Amendment was passed, the devolution of disaster management fell to the provinces, which meant that the NDMA required cooperation from the provinces to ensure there was functional coordination during crisis situations.
We also required an intra-governmental reporting mechanism to ensure speed, efficiency, and transparency in any crisis for smooth and accurate decision making. Imagine the ability of all relevant ministries to communicate on one system in real-time. This alone would have been an incredible civil service reform outcome; a dream realized for those advocating for civil service bureaucracy reform.
At the federal level, the NDMA needed to coordinate and cooperate with all the necessary ministries, and had to achieve the same task in the provinces as well. The PDMAs and at the district level DDMAs had to be functional, and needed to have all the necessary hardware and capacities to manage all of the phases of disaster management. The district management plans would have an incredible HDI domino effect if they were seriously taken.
This was no easy task, given the multiple stakeholders claiming control and decision making after the 18th Amendment, which devolved disaster management to the provinces. Even with devolved disaster management, the principles of coordination and cooperation for effective rehabilitation required command and control over information management flows for decision making and planning. This is great in theory, but in practice, politics and power undermined the process at every level imaginable.
For the 2010 floods, we managed to pilot the data management system between all three tiers of disaster management and our donor agencies involved in relief, early recovery and rehabilitation. The information management system was, and continues to be the glue that ensures efficiency, transparency and coordination - up and down.
The Pakistani government’s response to disaster is exactly where we were in 2005, but without the international aid.
Some of the challenges I recall included how it was challenging to override the economic affairs division’s existing donor input into their database. They insisted that they remain in control over donor information inputs, but the NDMA managed to convince them, that in a crisis management situation their data management system was inappropriate, and did not have the mandate to coordinate what was required for speedy policy making. These battles were hard, and the experience has left battle scars for everyone involved. Where there should have been support and encouragement from government bodies, for aid effectiveness and efficiencies - there was pushback. The rationalization of obstructions would wear down even the most resilient of policymakers.
Nevertheless, in law, on paper, in an authorized organogram, the NDMA, PDMAs & DDMAs had the necessary legal authority, trainings and terms of references, for necessary staffing and most importantly, manuals for critical sectors. With the assistance of the UNDP and multiple partners at the national, provincial and district levels, disaster management plans were developed and approved. Pilot districts were funded and DRM and DRR trainings were implemented to mitigate human catastrophes and build resilience. These disaster risk reduction plans should have become the blueprints for all districts of Pakistan where vulnerabilities had been identified.
Figure 1: NDMA Organogram
Outside of the SPU’s purview, the Chairman NDMA had partnered with the Japanese government to create a disaster risk map for Pakistani districts and their disaster vulnerabilities. This extremely important analysis should have fed into all our development planning and investments across the 154 plus districts.
What we call resilience investment today could have begun in 2011. From augmenting budgetary allocations to highly vulnerable districts to taking rural planning seriously, these measures would include necessary resettlement of population from red zones, to strengthening mitigation measures on the ground. This risk mapping would have been our framework for commitments towards climate change adaptation.
But for reasons too many know - I think this vulnerability mapping of districts was parked on some dusty shelf since 2011. I am not making a generalized statement here, because many at the helm remain unaware of this risk mapping exercise. Moreover, there are too many cooks with their fingers in the pot at the federal and provincial level who do not much at all to contribute positively towards disaster management or mitigation measures.
Since 2010, the government’s inability to keep citizen’s welfare at the center of its service delivery goals has intensified the confusion between ministries. Even today, between the Planning Commission, the Climate Change ministry, the Council of Common Interest, the floods commissioner inside the NDMA and the Prime Minister’s Office, the clarity on management does not exist.
I can give you one example from 2010. To this day, the whereabouts of the funds raised by Prime Minister Yusuf Reza Gilani for the 2010 floods relief effort are unknown. The funds should have come into NDMA’s accounts, but we did not know how much was raised nor who dispersed it, where or how. The NDMA had its own system all the way down to the districts, along with a delivery mechanism with local partners - but it was ignored and bypassed.
In 2010, the NDMA was hampered in its ability to lead in all the stages of disaster response management effectively. A whole host of confused actors hampered the NDMA, and its efficacy has resembled a parking lot of non-technical bureaucrats.
Disaster management, risk reduction and mitigation measures were not going to be priority areas for the NDMA or the PDMAs and DDMAs. That would require a completely different set of institutional arrangements and a buy-in from the government of Pakistan to invest in its citizen’s resilience. There was no financial or policy decisions which indicated that the buy-in would ever exist.
How much of this has changed in 2022
In a country where the rank of an office speaks louder than the terms of reference of the job, the Chairman of the NDMA, did not have the rank of minister of state, nor a super bureaucrat. General Nadeem was a retired general, and therefore his authority depending on his networking through his past authority and the goodwill he had accumulated, not from the formal rank he once held.
This was a huge obstacle in the practical process of disaster response management at crucial points.
I recall discussing the efficiency of having an army officer - retired or serving - as the Chairman of the NDMA. General Nadeem was an exception to the rule no doubt, he was a General who understood Disaster Management keenly, but he also acknowledged that the job required a whole army of technical experts in many areas. Unfortunately, the SPU were unable to ensure that the future leadership of NDMA remain in the hands of a professional. The SPU’s strategic planning argued that the institutional arrangements required a minimum standard in areas expertise, in the minimum official positions we advised for NDMA management. Exceptional individuals could never be a strategy for effective governance.
Too soon, I realized that although the Chairman NDMA had hired us to develop capacity for the NDMA, it was going to remain a logistical cell run by the armed forces for rescue and relief coordination.
Disaster management, risk reduction and mitigation measures were not going to be priority areas for the NDMA or the PDMAs and DDMAs. That would require a completely different set of institutional arrangements and a buy-in from the government of Pakistan to invest in its citizen’s resilience. There was no financial or policy decisions which indicated that the buy-in would ever exist.
Despite this reality, the SPU, in record time, wrote crucial sectoral manuals for the NDMA. Sectoral Strategic Plans were based on knowledge accumulated from hundreds of surveys of affected populations. Those of us who designed these sector strategies had worked in disaster response for the 2005, 2007, 2009 and the 2010 floods.
The SPU wrote seven disaster management strategies and plans: agriculture and livelihoods, water and sanitation, social protection, education, health, shelter and housing reconstruction, and planning, coordination and Data Management Systems. These are subjects which would be critical interventions in any kind of disaster, which included a poor and largely vulnerable population. Moreover, all our strategies were sensitive to cross-cutting themes.
Harris Khalique was the team leader of three sectors. His team included Ammar Rasheed and Zeeshan Noel; together they wrote the social protection, health and education manuals. Leading the shelter and housing sectors was team leader Waqas Hanif, with Haider Raza as research assistant. Dr Zaigham was the team leader for agriculture and livelihoods, with Kamran Khan as his researcher. Dr. Lashari led the water and sanitation strategy with researcher Shahriz. I led the planning, coordination and Data Management Sectors with research assistant Umair Javed.
All team leaders tapped into their networks of expertise to develop the most comprehensive, user friendly, practical knowledge for each sector - for management practitioners. In my areas of responsibility, I sought technical advice from many experts, including Shakir Hussain of Creative Chaos, and an international data management non-government organization with expertise in disaster management MIS. None of us worked in silos; all our sector manuals integrated overlaps and we were aware of our colleagues’ workings. This integrated management system was key, and I was draconian about it.
Looking at the NDMA, the PDMAs and the DDMAs in the 2022 floods has been disquieting at many levels. The reputation of the organization is weak and the information management problematic. The Council of Common Interest (CCI) has usurped many of the NDMC’s powers, which has undermined the NDMA, which de facto weakens the flow of information and management capacities of the PDMAs and DDMAs.
There are no DDMAs staff or systems in place. The lone district coordination officer is burdened as the sole disaster response coordinator with no on-ground support. At the discretion of a support organization, the DC may get an MIS officer or staff support to buttress human resource gaps - but this support remains untrained and random. As a result, mapping any activity using on the ground-data management is unreliable and not comprehensive. In 2022, we did not see a surge capacity for district coordinators. The armed forces continue to remain as the informal or formal agency to supplement DCs on the ground; they remain an ad hoc source of support and do not cover the entire scope of disaster response management. This burden admittedly is an impossible burden to bear without the appropriate staff, training, and systems in place.
In 2022, we have yet another challenge. The DC ropes in the revenue staff to undertake household extension work on relief and mapping. Unfortunately, in many of the flood hit areas in 2022, there are no revenue officials to rely on as extension relief workers. This is so because of the land ownership patterns here. These areas are dominated by single or a handful of large landlords with thousands and millions of landless tenants, as the majority of 33 million flood affected.
Looking at the NDMA, the PDMAs and the DDMAs in the 2022 floods has been disquieting at many levels.
Feedback from the ground regarding the role of the NDMA & PDMAs have not been positive. I have heard that they have hindered relief work on occasion, instead of being the backbone for all interventions. The real heroes are the district coordination officers who have, under unimaginable challenges, had to fill in the gap for widespread institutional apathy.
Very little is known factually about what is happening to the 33 million citizens affected by the floods. I cannot express how depressing it is for those of us who imagined building an authority that could have seriously facilitated mitigation measures and provided this information accurately. A strong NDMA, supported all the way down by effective DDMAs would have aided millions of Pakistanis and saved billions of dollars.
The Pakistani government’s response to disaster is exactly where we were in 2005, but without the international aid. When I read about the Prime Minister’s Initiative to develop a real time dashboard for MIS, I cringed. There was a database system with formats, software, key indicators - all the information needed for disaster management for policy making and analysis. There is absolutely no need for inventing new systems.
Why do we spend and waste so much every single time? It is as if Pakistan wants to waste and repeat the same mistakes over and over again. In the past 12 years, the entire of the institutional memory of NDMA has been lost. Why was the NDMA not strengthened in the last 12 years? This is the time for the public to ask and demand an appropriate response.
I sense that in the absence of stronger government leadership, multilateral institutions and the international community will also overlook social safety inclusions for the most vulnerable. I am not skeptical based on cynicism, but from my own observations of how relief has been managed thus far; for example, the lack of notified camp management in Balochistan meant there was no insured shelter for millions. Those who lost their homes, and were rescued from drowning remain without a roof through early recovery and rehabilitation. Just this single lapse in response has had a dangerous impact on all women and children, and their health, nutrition, food security.
My criticism is not restricted to the Government of Pakistan alone. The lack of coordinated response is also evident in the work of multilateral institutions and donor agencies. Pakistan is a pilot country for UN Reform and the Paris Agreement’s decision to streamline aid effectiveness. We have not seen these efficiencies in the collective UN agencies or donor interventions on ground. With the current mantra of climate change adaptation and climate justice, one has not seen budgets nor the programming to reflect attempts at guaranteeing social security of the most vulnerable in the rehabilitation plans.
There are some rumblings that a pool of funding donated by multiple agencies will be established for each sector in each district - which is welcome. Better late than never, I guess. There is insufficient money, and maximizing its impact must be the center of decision making. The decisions continue to be top down in the absence of local government or DDMAs, and therefore lopsided and skewed priorities will continue to privilege some over others in the distressed districts.
The final damage and need assessment Post Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) is out. It has referred to all of the social protection language formally, but will it make its support to the Government of Pakistan conditional? If that is the case, millions of vulnerable Pakistanis will not have resilient rehabilitation.
This is an opportunity to build back the National Disaster Management Authority - from the DDMAs up. In the absence of effective local government, the district coordinator must be empowered to provide basic functions for disaster response effectively.
Let’s build from the ground up so that we are not caught unaware again.
