The department of Disaster and Human Security Management (DHSM), under the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) in Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP), has organised a three-day event - ‘Disaster Management Exercise (DMX) – 2021.’
Dean of FASS, Brigadier Gen A F M Atiqur Rahman, supervised the first day of the exercise which was attended by JICA Country Program Coordinator (Disaster Risk Reduction) Naoki Matsumura, additional engineer of Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) Tariq bin Yusuf, Military Secretary to the President's Secretariat Brigadier Gen Raju Ahmed and Rumana Khan of UNFPA.
Major Gen (Retd) Tawhid, Chairman of Global Bengal Initiative, oversaw the program as a lead exerciser of DMX 0.1.
On the second day of the exercise, students from different batches of the Department of Disaster and Human Security Management participated in a competition on ‘Immediate Earthquake Response’ and three teams were awarded prizes.
This taught the students about various solutions to the issues to be dealt with in an emergency after an earthquake.
Osman Goni Raju, a 4th-year student from the Department of Disaster and Human Security Management, said, “This event helped us to get prepared for sudden onset disaster like earthquake and we got to know how different govt. and non-govt. stakeholders should perform their activity during a disaster by practical implementation.”
Vice-Chancellor of BUP, Major General Md Moshfequr Rahman, spoke as the chief guest. Among others, BUP high officials, faculty members and students also attended the exercise.
This was the first event of its kind to be organised by any public university in Bangladesh.
The Armed Forces Division organises a similar event each year named Disaster Response Exercise and Exchange (DREE).
