More than 80 percent of the current staff of the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) are not trained in disaster management.
That’s according to the outgoing Director General of NADMO, Brigadier General Francis Sanziri.
He is warning the organization may be incapable of dealing with any form of disaster if poor budgetary and resource allocation to the organization is not addressed.
Brigadier General, Sanziri on his handing over ceremony after two years in office wants government to restructure the organisation and to train its officials in readiness to confront possible flooding with the outset of the rains.
NADMO has been known to be a den for political appointees with governments recruiting its supporters to the organisation even though they have little or no experience in disatster management.
“Lack of training for staff before they are even deployed. I can tell you more than 80% of staff have no training on disaster management. That is absurd and that accounts for so many complaints about our effectiveness and efficiency.
“We equally lack logistics insufficient budgetary allocation for in-house administration and of course late approvals for the purchase of relief items,” Brigadier Sanziri said.
He called on Senior Minister to intervene if the challenges with the Organisation will be resolved.
The Senior minister, Yaw Osafo however says government has concluded plans to train all public sector workers to enable them understand their roles and operate effectively.
“The problem is that if you ask an average worker at NADMO what do you do, his answer will be i distribute rice and sugar. That is not it,” he said.
“It is very important that people working are trained specifically to have skills to do their work properly,” he added.
He said a special school will be introduced to train the public sector workers, particularly workers at NADMO who have to do a peculiar job of helping during major disasters.
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