India will host Pakistan and other member-countries of the China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation for a meeting on urban disaster handling this week.
The National Disaster Response Force is hosting the preparatory meeting for the ‘Joint mock exercise on urban earthquake search and rescue’ to be held next year in India. The meeting assumes significance as India had called off dialogue with Pakistan last month. A senior NDRF official said Pakistan had accepted the invitation. “We have received a confirmation from Pakistan. It is not clear whether they would be represented from the High Commission here or someone would be coming from Pakistan,” the official said.
The first phase of the meeting will be held from November 1 to 2 in Delhi’s Le Meridien hotel.
“The exercise will provide an opportunity to member-countries to validate their preparedness and resilience to address the various challenges like strengthening the effective utilisation of the search and rescue teams for emergency response, coordination and information sharing with foreign embassies in disaster-affected countries, making humanitarian assistance in disaster response more effective,” the statement said.
