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    "id": 595630,
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    "content": "proper regulations or prove to be inadequate to meet the disaster management programmes that they are meant to finance. It is a very important gap in the administration of county governments, with regard to disaster management. I would like to add, along with what is called Special Programmes---. I am glad that in the present Jubilee Government there is no Ministry called Special Programmes, although the Ministry of Devolution and Planning seems to have taken that mandate without being called so. I think the portfolio of Special Programmes should be used very sparingly because it can easily lead to spending monies that are not budgeted for. Eventually, that will hurt the Government expenditure as a whole and create imbalances. This Bill definitely makes it possible for disaster to be treated in a proper way and under proper regulations governed by the law. The other issue I wanted to raise is the issue of disaster. What qualifies as disaster? This is something that must be properly interrogated. Under preliminary Part 1 of the Bill, it is said that disaster means a catastrophe, a mishap, calamity or grave occurrence in an affected area, arising from a natural man-made cause and which results in substantial lose of life human suffering, damage to or destruction to property or damage to or degradation of the environment and is of such nature or magnitude as to be beyond coping capacity of the community in the affected areas. Mr. Deputy Speaker Sir, I think, I would like the Committee to consider in the definition of disaster, apart from catastrophe, mishap, calamity and grave occurrence and so on. There is something which I want to call major accidents. We have seen those major accidents in this country when oil tankers overturn and as fate would have it, people rush to fetch oil. Somebody smoking a cigarette may cause a disaster. I remember when I was Minister for Medical Services, I did witness two such major disasters. Disasters are very expensive to deal with because in the final analysis, you may have to deal with people who have 80 and above, degree burns. These are people who need special treatment. Such disasters may be way beyond the capacity of a county government to deal with. I have not paid attention to provisions in the Bill to that effect. However I would like to appeal to my friend, Sen. Haji, that, I was trying to go through it carefully to see whether this is catered for, but in the event that it is not, then it should be looked at. I know that in Part (iii), there are measures for disaster management Clause 15(3) reads:- “Each county government shall submit the county plan prepared under sub-clause (2) to the relevant county authority for approval.” Further, it provides under sub-clause (4) that:- “Each county plan shall include a statement on the vulnerability of different parts of the county to different forms of disaster.” In the case of my county, it could easily be that the areas which are prone to flooding, for example, it is an obvious case in the Kano Plains and the others. Then there are the measures to be adopted for prevention and mitigation and disasters in case of floods that are known, the manner in which the measures shall be integrated with the development The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}