On Friday, 3 June 2016 the City’s Disaster Risk Management (DRM) department held an exhibition and training course in collaboration with several other government and community services stakeholders at the Wesbank Multi-purpose Centre near Blue Downs in Subcouncil 21.

Over 20 exhibitors were in attendance, including the provincial Social Development department; SAPS; Home Affairs; SASSA; Working on Fire; various NGOs; and a range of City of Cape Town departments including DRM; Metro EMS; Environmental Health; Sport and Recreation; Human Settlements; Social Development & Early Childhood Development; Traffic; Fire & Rescue Services.

The theme of the exhibition was “Mitigating risk through engagement” with a specific emphasis on how the community can assist in identifying and reporting risks including crime, flooding, fires and other environmental hazards.

Attendees were given a grounding in hazard identification and incident mapping as well as in mitigation and prevention measures. They were also given information on how to alert the authorities in order to have the problem attended to. Floodwise and Firewise training was also provided to give community members specific skills to deal with these frequently occurring hazards.

The photo inset shows attendees receiving their certificates for participating in the DRM awareness initiative.

During the course of the training, a number of concerns related to service delivery and risk mitigation were raised. These will be referred to the relevant departments for attention. Cllr Cynthia Claassen (Ward 19) thanked all attendees for supporting the community outreach.

'The initiative should make residents more aware of life- and property-threatening environmental risks. With community cooperation, we can ensure a safer environment for all residents,' said Cllr Claassen.