Its urgent and of national security importance that the Cabinet considers and approves for onward transmission to Parliament of the Disaster Risk Management related bills and
Policy in the wake of the current fatalities facing the country and
lessons learnt from the
multi- agency approach
from handling the River side attack.
The country needs a firm legal regime that lays down the legal foundation for collaborative partnership in institutional participatory management of disasters, including mobilisation
of the essential wide range of resources necessary for management of all disasters and above all, a system that will remove any with inter – ministerial or inter agency turf wars by being domiciled at the OP.
There are a number of draft DRM related legal documents
gathering dust on the shelves in various public offices that are urgent needed to help country comprehensively with tragedies. The DRM Policy 2017 sponsored by four ministries; i.e. Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government, Ministry of Devolution & ASALs, Ministry of Defence and CS Treasury needs to be fast tracked. In addition, the DRM Bill 2016 and the National Disaster Management Bill 2018 — currently before the Senate — need to be enacted as a matter of urgency and national concern.
Once enacted and implemented, the country will be prepared to deal with disasters and tragedies, including those that cause mass fatalities in a better way as seen during the handling the recent terrorist attack in Nairobi and other emergencies.
The regime will clearly spelt out the management of such national disasters, set out standard operating procedures including saving lives, securing the scene of crime and evidence and managing the national reaction and mood
following such events.
What the country current lacks is a comprehensive approach to dealing with national disasters that would enable easy national mobilisation
and reaction during such tragedies. A few of the lessons learnt from the DusitD2 Hotel attack was lack of awareness and helpful information to responders, survivors and families about what to do, that would exuberate the situation, endanger the hostages or minimise family anxiety and fears. You could see the media, responders, and survivors and members of the public frustrating the security team from cordoning off the scene of crime, for safety of the hostages and for counter security/rescue operations.
This time the state’s initial site and risk assessment and incident command structure was on point, including controlling operational command issues and information flow management. For successful investigation and prosecution of suspects, it’s important for the scene preservation and management. The private sector, especially property owners must join government in investing in training of key people including private security guards on existing incident protocol as first responders’
because
a number of people drawn from the general public and uniformed police officers are usually the first to respond.
The government should invest more in training and empowering those likely to be incident commander are men and women who have the capacity to implement a holistic, effective and safe response to the incident scene. The law is required urgently when matters are still hot. The team working on developing tools from dealing with mass fatalities also needs to finalise their work for the good of the country. The current framework is inadequate.
The writer works at the Media Council of Kenya and is journalists, safety and protection trainer