Illustrative image (Source: internet) Ninh Thuan (VNA) – A meeting was held on May 22 at Nguyen Binh Khiem high school in PhuocNam commune, the south central province of Ninh Thuan, calling for efforts tomitigate disaster risks in schools and community.
Nguyen Binh Khiem school’s students presented photos and videos on impacts ofnatural disasters and droughts on the environment and people’s life togetherwith joint solutions.
They joined their teachers in a drill responding to natural disasters when theyhit their school.
Attending the event, Rana Flowers, UNICEF Representative in Vietnam, said she wantsNinh Thuan’s leaders to pay more heed to the prevention and combat of naturaldisasters, placing children as the centre of the effort.
The province also needs to pay attention to the issues of supplying safe waterand ensuring environmental sanitation for local people, especially whendroughts and saltwater intrusion are likely generating bigger effects, shesaid.
She advised the locality to integrate indexes on children into its socio-economicdevelopment plan.
According to theNatural Disaster Prevention and Control General Department of the Ministry ofAgriculture and Rural Development, natural disasters cause the death andmissing of around 300 people and economic damage worth 1-1.5 percent of GDPa year on average.
Besides visible damage, natural disasters trigger long-term consequences to theliving environment and effects on people’s life and production and thecountry’s sustainable development.
During 2015-2016 and the first months of 2018, Ninh Thuan was hit by two longdroughts, which were said the fiercest over the past two decades. The droughtsseverely affected 31 out of the locality’s 47 communes and forced nearly 42,000people to deal with a shortage of rice and daily water.
At the end of 2018 and early 2019, the province suffered floods which were triggeredby three storms, which caused heavy economic losses.-VNA
VNA
