State labour, Backward Classes and Minorities Welfare Minister Antar Singh Arya here on Monday urged for participation of corporate sector in disaster management activities from post-disaster activities to more focus on prevention, preparedness and mitigation initiatives. While inaugurating a regional conference on Chemical (Industrial) Disaster Management: Emergency preparedness & Disaster Risk Reduction on Chemical, Petroleum, petrochemical, Pharmaceutical and Natural Gas Industry organised by FICCI, NDMA, PNGRB and the Government of Madhya Pradesh, the Minister while stressing the need for a regulatory steps to ensure industrial safety, emphasised on better response mechanisms in order to minimise man-made errors and ensure timely and effective interventions from responder agencies and minimise suffering.
A shift of focus from response oriented approach to one which emphasises on preparedness and disaster mitigation; and finally strengthening the institution at the local and regional level in order to make them resilient to disasters, he added while lauding initiative of the FICCI, NDMA and PNGRB for organising the conference. He said such events help the chemical, petroleum, oil and gas, petrochemical, pharmaceutical industry in the country to gain knowledge and keep pace with the best global practices on environment, safety, transportation of hazardous materials, storages and health management.
Former Member, NDMA and Chairman-CIDM lt. Gen. (Dr.) J R Bhardwaj shared his experiences on the subject and impressed upon the participants to take advantage of the training in further improving their operations so that chemical accidents are fully avoided through better onsite and offsite planning. Chairman, PNGRB S Krishnan said “The conference focuses on safety and security in a very important area of transportation of petroleum, petroleum products and natural gas through pipelines which is expected to grow exponentially in near future in the country. The conference platform is therefore, significantly used by PNGRB for promoting natural gas distribution network and safe pipeline corridors in the country”.
He added that State Government and industry will have to join hands and see how natural gas utilisation be increased. Principal Secretary, labour Department, Govt. of Madhya Pradesh MK Varshney said that we need to think about safety aspect of chemical industry as we have to be careful about health and hazard from the chemicals.
Talking about the State’s action plan for disaster management labour Commissioner KC Gupta said that state is developing an effective and comprehensive DM Plan in consultation with all stakeholders. Standard Operating Procedures and Documentation of the Best Practices are important components of disaster preparedness programs and will be developed for different levels for easy adoption, replication and sharing.