NGO's and Government Relief Organizations - Essay Example

This section explores the roles and responsibilities of the government, Non Governmental Organizations, and Volunteer Organizations. It illustrates the roles and responsibilities of the government that must be considered in a disaster development plan, how the issues affect Non Governmental Organizations, volunteer groups, international relief, and corrective policies to identified negative effects of the government’s roles. Roles and responsibilities of government that must be considered in disaster relief planning Disaster management is a key national initiative in Thailand.

As a result, the government has outlined roles and responsibilities to ensure policies that ensures proper disaster management. This has been directly and indirectly achieved through diverse policymaking. The government for example has political responsibility in defining disaster management initiatives and such guidelines must be considered in disaster relief planning. This is because the guidelines are developed through legislations and as a result have legal authority over disaster relief programs with the aim of facilitating efficiency.

The “Civil Defense Act” that promoted international community’s involvement in Thailand’s relief programs is one of the political initiatives that has influenced planning and implementation of disaster relief programs by defining authority and limitations of international efforts (Carafano and Weitz, 2008, p. 196). Disaster relief planning should therefore closely consider such provisions in order to benefit from waivers as well as to avoiding legal liabilities in implementation of disaster relief programs.

Similarly, the government has a coordinating committee for internal disaster relief programs whose roles and authority must be considered in disaster relief program planning (Carafano and Weitz, 2008). The “Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Act” has further induced bureaucracy in relief programs leading to a centralized system (Thailand, n.d., p. 2). Disaster relief planning should also consider government’s direct involvement in relief initiatives to facilitate identification of unexplored relief needs (Thailand, n.d.).

The government’s roles also include formulation of economic and logistics policies that aim at promoting delivery of disaster relief goods for program implementation. These include price regulations, waivers of restrictions and facilitated transportation towards implementation of disaster relief programs. Similarly, the policies regulate applicable commodities to relief programs to ensure maintenance of adequate quality levels for health safety. This aims at protecting lives of relief recipients from possible health hazards due to substandard goods.

Such government roles in regulating economic as well as public health factors therefore directly affect availability of resources for implementing a relief program and should be considered by disaster relief planners (Red Cross, 2012). Further, government’s fiscal policies such as taxation as well as ‘non-monetary’ controls on flow of goods into the country are important to disaster relief planning. This is because they determine feasibility of a program through ascertaining availability of resources since planning a program whose resources are not locally available with restricted importation would limit the program’s level of success (Red Cross, 2012