It is with pleasure that I welcome you to the official website of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM), a division of the Ministry of National Security.
We at the ODPM believe that public education and public awareness are vital to the creation of a disaster resilient country and region. Accordingly, we must ensure that the general citizenry is armed with the necessary tools to plan and prepare in the face of natural and man-made hazards. Public education and public awareness are two mechanisms that should be adopted to provide our citizens with all these necessary preparedness and mitigative tools.
It is in this vein that the ODPM deemed it necessary to re create its website and establish pages on the social networking sites of Twitter and Facebook. We affirm that social networking media and other tools such as websites and text messaging must be used to keep citizens updated on how to plan and prepare to safeguard the lives of their friends, families, community and country.
Since transforming from the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) to the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management in 2005, we have shifted from a response-centric approach to an approach which focuses more on mitigation and preparedness. In addition, our Work Programme, which traditionally focused on disaster risk management, management and coordination of responses by First Responder Agencies, public education and community outreach activities and prevention and mitigation initiatives, was augmented to include consequence management and critical infrastructure protection.
Consequently, this website will focus on providing you with up to date public advisories, speeches, resources such as information on hazards to which our region is prone, pertinent and relevant links and much more apt information and tools.
It is our hope that this website will provide you with the necessary information so that you will have disaster risk management related information that is up -to- date and readily available...
On behalf of the entire ODPM, I thank you for visiting the site and I encourage you to start perusing the contents of our website.
Colonel (Ret’d) George Robinson
Chief Executive Officer