Jordan’s municipalities trained on weather early warning system

Amman: Ministry of Local Administration, in cooperation with Jordan Municipal Support Program funded by U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), launched a special training week for participating municipalities within Weather Early Warning Program Project. Since beginning of this week, training covered municipalities in the Kingdom's northern and central governorates and will continue until end of the current week to complete related activities for Jordan's southern municipalities, according to a ministry statement. On its goals, the program aims to reduce risks from weather emergencies to protect citizens' lives and public and private property and reduce costs of daily warning operations ahead of weather conditions, to take precautionary measures, primarily checking on flood channels, valleys, culverts, hotspots and removing obstacles. The program comes as a result of the ministry's endeavor to create an early warning and adaptation system to climate change to respond "quickly" to natural disast ers by integrating risk monitoring and warning-based responses, the statement said. Speaking during the launching ceremony, the ministry's Secretary-General for Administrative and Financial Affairs, Dr. Nidal Abu Orabi Adwan, stressed importance of training the ministry's workers on weather early warning system, which contributes to managing flash flood risks and mitigating their impacts before hitting residential areas. The ministry, he noted, developed a plan for crisis and emergency management, referring to its main emergency room and 126 other rooms in Jordan's municipalities and joint services councils, which is viewed an "integrated" system to prevent and deal with floods and emergency situations. Source: Jordan News Agency