Saturday : 21 August 2010 :
ADP: Victims Identification office is ready to deal
with crisis as soon as they occur
Colonel Mohammad Abdullah Al Nuaimi, Acting Director of Emergency and Public safety at ADP Directorate general of Central Operations has affirmed the preparedness of the Victims Identification Office (VIO) to deal with disasters when they occur.
The Office provides information about victims by identifying victims for their relatives in a quick way. It is activated when there is a crisis or disaster, in addition to accidents victims, missing persons and assisting in identifying them.
The Office has been set up in response to the directive of HH Lt. General Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and minister of Interior, as part of HH keenness to provide care and safety for community members. It is one of strategic initiatives to which ADP GHQ pays great attention in coordination with a number of partners, in order to provide support for victims and their families.
Colonel Al Nuaimi said "Victims Identification Office presents an important national message focusing on delivering high quality government services, using advanced technologies to register disasters victims' data at local and international levels and to give support and advice to similar agencies abroad".
The Office’s nature of work is to provide full information during and after disasters to identify disasters victims and inform their families with these findings.
The Office receives reports about crisis and disasters, and victims relatives, answering their queries in different languages for correct input of information. Then the Office identifies victims and missing persons through available data and comparing them with victims' records.
It provides relatives with real information about the missing person and present answers to questions.
The Office has social goals in terms of humanitarian work, improvement of services delivered to victims' families, including social and psychological support to victims and missing persons' families.
A methodology has been made to support the concept of setting up the Victims Identification Office, encouraging voluntary participation, introducing the office and its importance through a number of key initiatives and strategic plans, making a joint working plan with medium and long term evaluation, establishing organizing rules and legal framework, preparing periodical national scenarios to the public to ensure the Office coordinates with relevant partners.
The Department of Emergency and Public safety has organized visits to UK, Scotland, Germany, Australia, Singapore, Japan and others which have rich expertise in this area. The aim of the visits is to know how they deal with crises and natural disasters victims, work mechanisms, how to receive phone calls and answer them during disasters, how to communicate with victims relatives, how to form a team to take DNA samples to identify victims.