SHILLONG: Shubham Tandon, consultant for the United Nations Development Programme, said on Friday the idea of the on PPP in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation workshop is to make corporate sectors understand the importance of risk-sensitive planning.
Highlighting the role played by private sectors in disaster response, Tandon said, “It is to improve urban resilience by engaging public-private players through new business opportunities in disaster risk reduction.”
He pointed out that it is necessary to make the corporate sector understand about making investment before a disaster occur and to ensure that the community is pre-prepare about it.
Though the state is not advanced in the industrial sector, he spoke on the feasibility of public-private partnership in Meghalaya which is not only about “big corporates like Tatas and the Reliance of the world”.
“It is also about the small and medium enterprises (SMEs). If they don’t have the capacity to help the community can they be prepared when they face a disaster,” he added.
According to him, for a state government to have an advantage with a private player, there has to be partnership between private sector and the state.
“Private sectors can bypass certain lines which the government cannot. If one process takes 10 days in a government set up, it will take 1 day in a corporate set up,” Tandon said.
Commenting on the next step, he said, “The next step is to start few pilots in the city.”
He said UNDP is aiming to promote business continuity planning for private sector industries and corporate houses during the time of disasters to lessen the impact of disasters on corporates and communities nearby.
In the chain of programmes held across the country, Tandon said there was a discussion with private players on disaster mitigation by proposing suitable technological idea which will benefit the community.
“The very basic idea is that the community should get benefit from the new technologies which already exist but that people do not know about it,” he added.
