The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

Experts at a seminar in the city said due to geographic features, Bangladesh frequently suffers from devastating floods, cyclones, storm surges, tornadoes, riverbank erosion and drought. Along with losses in life and livelihood, property and infrastructure, the country usually experiences enormous losses to education sector in particular at primary and secondary levels.

School infrastructures are destroyed and remain closed for a longer time and continue to reduce the contact hours. Along with hampering the process of imparting quality education, disaster directly contributes to enhancing the dropout rate caused by engagement of students in economic activities and deteriorations of health condition, they said.

Education infrastructure in Bangladesh needs long-term planning for sustainable recovery, they added.

Natural disasters impose hindrances over the goal of ensuring equitable access and enhancing the quality of education and thereby restraining the pace of attaining Millennium Development Goal (MDG) -2, 'Universal Education for All' by 2015. Hence, mainstreaming disaster risk reduction in the education sector, especially at primary and secondary levels is most essential to make reduced national risk associated with frequent disasters, sustain economic growth with decreased vulnerability of marginalised segments of the society, said the experts.

The seminar on 'Disaster Risk Reduction Education and Culture' was held at Chhayanaut Sangskriti Bhaban yesterday jointly organised by Advancing Public Interest Trust (APIT) and Shaptahik.

Dr M Anwarul Huque, former director general of NAEM, and Maliha Shahjahan of APIT, presented two papers, while Moniruzzaman Miah, former Vice Chancellor of Dhaka University, chaired the session.

Shashanka Saadi, Project Manager of UNDP, moderated the seminar, while Selina Hossain, writer, Mamtaz Jahan, curriculum specialist, Dr Md Hedayet Hossain and Syeda

Tahmina Akhter, Professors of IER of Dhaka University, SA Hasan Al Farooque, Coordinator of Actionaid, among others, spoke at the seminar.

Speakers said children are among the most vulnerable population group at time of natural catastrophe like earthquake, especially those attending school.

They urged the government creating budget provision or creating income-generating provisions for meeting operation and maintenance costs of schools both during no-disaster and also during post disaster restoration.

Involvement of the learners, teachers in the school infrastructure vulnerability analysis will provide them the understanding of the idea and also motivate them to replicate the learner and build a culture of disaster resilience within the whole community, said the experts.

Later another session on 'Sustainable, flexible and recovery plus visioning of resilient infrastructure for education system in Bangladesh' was held at the same venue where Munaz Ahmed Noor, Associate Professor of Department of Civil Engineering of BUET, presented keynote paper, while Mehedi Ahmed Ansary, Professor of Department of Civil Engineering of BUET, chaired the session.