Disaster management centre profile (DEMS) department headquarters building. This is done to comply with the National Disaster Management Centre minimum guidelines on a functional disaster management centre. In line with the Digital City agenda of the city, the future plans is that the DMC will be moved from Bedfordview to Kempton Park as part of a unified command centre. The new unified command centre will be a one-stop shop wherein all the different functional-based call centres will be under one roof. The current upgraded centre in Bedfordview will then become the fall-back centre. Bafana Mazibuko, acting head of centre; Millicent Ndwalane, deputy manager: emergency call centre; Mandla Mnyandu, senior manager: emergency call centre and Shadi Tsebe
Risk profile The most common emergency scenarios that the City of Ekurhuleni encounters include floods, fire, storms and strong winds. During the 2016/17 financial year, the DMC was activated more than three times due to the municipal water crisis, the tornado incident and the provincially declared flood disasters. In each instance the centre was operational for more than two weeks.
for Geo-Science and the Department of Mineral Resources to deal with the open mine shafts and sinkholes. On the issue of the dolomitic land, the municipality has dolomite risk section in the City Planning Department, which is trying to proactively deal with sinkhole challenges.
The municipality has mine shafts in the mining belt and forty percent dolomite land. To address these challenges the City of Ekurhuleni engaged the Council
Preparedness plans are well developed and form part of the Integrated Development Plan (IDP) in terms of legislative requirements. From time to
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time contingency plans are used to respond to incidents and/or disasters. The DMC’s disaster risk reduction policies and programmes include: • Awareness programme for floods • Awareness programme for shack fires • Risk and hazard identification programme • Preparedness in homes for the aged • Critical Infrastructural contingency plans
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