November 15, 2021

The Ministry in charge of Emergency Management together with Plan International Rwanda, to enhance resilience to natural disasters, trained District Disaster Management Officers (DDMOs). The five-day workshop training took place in Bugesera District from November 8 -12/2021.

The main objective of the workshop training for DDMOs was to effectively implement emergency management activities from grassroots level in the Country.

NZIRANZIZA Martin, Disaster Management Officer in Rusizi District, said the workshop training on different emergency management activities implementation has been very beneficial to DDMOs. 

“We gained a lot of knowledge and skills in line with disasters risk prevention, mitigation and conducting an organized assessment after disaster occurrences. We learnt different levels of disasters and how to mitigate their risks.” Said Nziranziza after the training in Bugesera District. 

Besides gaining knowledge and skills on disaster risk management, the District Disaster Management Officers (DDMOs) pledged their full effort to share the gained skills with their community to increase knowledge on disaster risk reduction across the country. 

“After this vital training, we are heading to the full utilization of the gained skills. We will sensitize our population to build their houses in the right selected places worth to limit the risks of disasters. Since our region is prone to the strong winds, we will make them be aware of how to strongly fix ceilings of their houses to limit damages,” said Edison Imanizabayo DDMO Ngoma District.

The Minister in charge of Emergency Management who visited the trainees on November 11, 2021 accompanied by Plan International Rwanda Country Director, William Mutero emphasized that DDMOs play a big role in Disaster management and requested them to engage population of their districts to participate in disaster risk mitigation activities.

“You do a great work in line with disaster risk prevention and mitigation. We commend your work but the journey is still long, we need to deploy more efforts in building resilience to disasters in our districts.” Said Minister Kayisire.

Rwanda experiences disasters that cause different damages and losses every year due to its exposure to some types of disaster, whether natural or man-made. In view of its vulnerability to various types of hydro meteorological and geological hazards, Rwanda can become one of the most disaster prone countries in the region if prevention and mitigation measures are not well implemented.

In 2020, disasters have led to death and serious injuries of people and their livestock, destruction of Government infrastructures and individual houses. The damages forced the Government to release 8,440, 849,900 Frw to rehabilitate 11,696 houses of the families that were rendered homeless.