AHA Centre and Deutsche Post DHL Group to Collaborate on Disaster Management and Recovery
ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management (AHA Centre) and Deutsche Post DHL Group sign a Memorandum of Intent to work together on emergency preparedness and disaster response
The ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management (AHA Centre) and Deutsche Post DHL (DPDHL) Group, the world’s leading mail and logistics services provider, signed a Memorandum of Intent (MOI) today to collaborate on emergency preparedness and disaster response.
As part of the MOI, DPDHL Group’s Disaster Response Team (DRT) will work on the ground together with Jakarta-based AHA Centre to facilitate the movement of international relief cargo during disaster response scenarios. This includes unloading cargo planes, conducting professional warehousing and inventory management as well as loading the relief goods for onward transportation. DRT will also provide expertise and support for AHA Centre’s courses and exercises related to ASEAN-ERAT (Emergency Response and Assessment Team) and ASEAN Humanitarian Logistics.
“Public-private partnerships with industry experts like DPDHL Group are critical in scaling up the One ASEAN, One Response vision. As our partnership with the DRT team at Sulawesi last year demonstrated, their expertise in facilitating the flow of relief goods and supporting civil military relations is invaluable,” said Adelina Kamal, Executive Director of the AHA Centre.
DPDHL Group’s DRT was in Indonesia between October 4 and 26, 2018. That deployment was one of its longest in the region to date, with 26 DHL volunteers facilitating the smooth processing and efficient flow of nearly 3,500 tonnes of relief goods.
“We are excited to partner with AHA Centre in their growing role as a regional coordinating hub for the mobilization of resources to disaster affected areas in Southeast Asia. This new collaboration builds upon our experience with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the area of disaster management, and the joint effort is especially important in the light of more frequent natural disasters in this region,” said Carl Schelfhaut, GoHelp Manager, Asia Pacific, DPDHL Group.
DPDHL Group’s DRTs are comprised of specially trained volunteer employees from across the Group’s business units, including DHL Express, DHL Global Forwarding, DHL Supply Chain and DHL eCommerce Solutions. The teams are located in the Americas, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific regions, covering approximately 80% of disaster-prone countries.
The MOI was signed at the launch of the ASEAN Philippines satellite warehouse in Camp Aguinaldo, Manila and was witnessed by Undersecretary Ricardo B. Jalad, Administrator of the Office of Civil Defense and Executive Director, National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) of the Philippines.
The new satellite warehouse in the Philippines is part of a network of warehouses in the region. The main regional stockpile is located at Subang, Malaysia, within the compound of the United Nations Humanitarian Response Depot (UNHRD), a network of logistics hubs organized by the UN World Food Programme. In addition to the regional stockpile in Subang, the satellite warehouse in Manila and Chainat, Thailand form the Disaster Emergency Logistics System of ASEAN (DELSA).
About the Disaster Response Team
The DRTs are part of DPDHL Group’s GoHelp disaster management program, which it has operated in partnership with the United Nations (UN) since 2005. Through this partnership, the Group provides the UN and national disaster management agencies with pro bono access to its core logistics expertise, and the logistics skills of more than 500 specially-trained employee volunteers worldwide who can deploy within 72 hours after a natural disaster.
Since the partnership was launched, the DRTs have completed more than 40 deployments for different natural disasters in over 20 countries – most recently the team was deployed at Beira Airport, Mozambique, to help in the aftermath of cyclone Idai in April 2019.
In addition to the DRT deployments, the Group’s Get Airports Ready for Disaster (GARD) initiative – also part of the GoHelp program – trains airport management in high-risk regions to be better prepared should disaster strike.
