Disaster prevention: India to stand shoulder to shoulder with SCO nations

New Delhi, Aug 24: Reiterating its commitment for achieving common goals in preventing disasters and emergencies, India today assured the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) nations that it was willing to stand shoulder to shoulder and explore all possible avenues of collaboration. Speaking at the 9th meeting of Heads of Governments of SCO dealing with the prevention and elimination of emergency situation in Ata, Kyrgyz Republic, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said, “We have invested heavily in developing international collaborative initiatives and established the Tsunami Early Warning System for the Indian Ocean Rim Countries. We have also deployed our National Disaster Response Force in other affected countries for response operations.” “We need cooperation in the area of early warning systems for extreme weather events. The SCO member states may have very different climate and weather systems but the underlying processes for forecasting adverse weather events, anticipating their impacts and issuing early warnings remain the same,” he added. “A technical meeting of representatives of our meteorological services will be a very beneficial first step to foster collaboration in this area. The meeting can be structured around specific components of a comprehensive end-to-end severe weather early warning system,” the Minister said. Further, India also offered to host a meeting of the meteorological services of SCO countries in early 2019. India has recently become the member of SCO and noted that the area of cooperation identified for this meeting is timely and appropriate. UNI