COMMENT | Another calamity, where’s disaster management law?

COMMENT | As the Asean official in charge of drafting and implementing the 2005 Asean Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response (AADMER), it distresses me to ask my own country this question 16 years later.

For all its pretence and showmanship, I will justify here that the government does not have a comprehensive law on disaster management, but mismanages disaster and crisis situations using bureaucratic institutions and administrative policies.

That is why the government bungles its response to major disasters every time. Otherwise, how could anyone explain this?

Our Keluarga Malaysia government with its bloated but excellent cabinet/advisers (scoring 90 percent) celebrated with pomp and glamour its 100 days of achievement/aspiration, yet within days leaves its own citizens in despair, suffering from one of the worst floods in modern times. A national embarrassment smack right in the most developed and prosperous Klang Valley region of Malaysia.

All we have is a hodgepodge of civilian agencies coordinated by the bureaucratic National Disaster Management Agency (Nadma), headed by a special functions (read miscellaneous tasks) minister, and purports to command the uniformed frontline responders such as the Civil Defence Force, Fire and Rescue Department, Police, and Armed Forces. Worse still, the SOPs, directives, policies, and procedures are only administrative and not legally binding.

The complete breakdown of coordination, response and rescue even in highly urbanised Shah Alam speaks for itself. It was reported that victims had to fend for themselves for an excruciating 48 hours, uniformed personnel arrived a day later at best but were not prepared to move in immediately, and many were hungry and left searching for food.

It is a total structural and systemic failure in disaster management.

The prime minister himself acknowledged it...