The Union Cabinet, Chaired by Hon’ble Prime Minister has ex-post facto approved  the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed on 02nd August, 2022 between the National Disaster Management Authority of the Republic of India and the National Disaster Management Authority of the Republic of Maldives on cooperation in the field of Disaster Management.

Benefits:

The MoU seeks to put in place a system, whereby both India and Maldives will be benefited from the Disaster Management mechanisms of each other and it will help in strengthening the areas of preparedness, response and capacity building in the field of Disaster Management.

Salient features of the MoU: 

1. The Parties will extend mutual support on the request of one Party in the time of large scale disaster incident occurring within its territory, in the field of emergency relief, response, humanitarian assistance
2. The Parties will exchange information and share experiences and best practices of disaster response, mitigation, planning and preparedness.
3. The Parties will share satellite remote sensing data and expertise of space technology base applications for effective disaster mitigation, including exchange of information on disaster on prevention and risk assessment.
4. The Parties will extend cooperation in the field of advanced information technology, early warning systems, remote sensing, satellite communication & navigation services.
5. To consider training and capacity building programme for sectoral mainstreaming in disaster risk reduction, the parties will provide opportunities to train senior officials and rescue personnel of emergency management service in the short and long term trainings.
6. The Parties will exchange information about the domestic and international exhibitions as well as exercises to be held in both countries and also cooperate in areas such as research, knowledge exchange, faculty support programmes, documentation in the areas of disaster risk reduction and academic programmes in disaster resilience & climate change adaptation.
7. The parties will determine further cooperation in other activities related to disaster management.
8. The Parties may exchange Tsunami Advisories, Storm Surge, High Wave Alert, Multi Hazard vulnerability information and multi hazard risk assessment due to oceanogenic disasters along their coastal zones.
9. The Parties may exchange information about Numerical weather Predication (NWP) products and Extended Range Forecast (ERF).
10. The Parties may exchange information including provision of access by Indian side to the Real Time Analysis of Products and Information Dissemination (RAPID) for visualization of Indian Weather Satellite Data as well as providing training on NWP and Satellite Meteorology by IMD.
11. The Parties will initiate an annual disaster management exercise that will be held in the different geographic settings of both nations.

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DS