Ms Mojatsohle Kumang represents Dept at the 6th Biennial SASDIR Conference during Womens Month
As a representative of the Department, Ms. Mojatsohle Kumang, will have the privilege of traveling to Mauritius to attend and present at the 6th Biennial Southern Africa Society For Disaster Reduction (SASDIR) Conference.
This coincides with Women's Month
This conference aims to provide a platform for the presentation, discussion and learning of different approaches to disaster risk reduction amidst climate change. Hosted by the African Centre for Disaster Studies (North West University) alongside the University of Mauritius and Southern Africa Society for Disaster Reduction, the conference seeks to coordinate and organise leading academics, researchers, practitioners and policymakers globally to engage in impactful discussions regarding disaster risk management strategies, innovations and challenges. During this 2-day conference taking place on 21-23 August 2024, Ms. Kumang will be presenting and sharing her research paper "Water Management Public Awareness: A Social Capital Approach in a South African Semi-Informal Settlement".
Ms. Kumang, who was born and raised in the Free State Province, joined the Department in 2006 until 2008. From there, she continued her career at the Department of Water and Sanitation. She rejoined the DAERL in 2023 as the Deputy Director responsible for Disaster Risk Management. In this capacity, her role includes disaster risk reduction through awareness programmes, mitigating the impact of agricultural disasters, coordinating responses to disasters and developing and advocating for policies that support disaster risk management in agriculture. Her childhood in the Free State as well as her time working at the Dept. of Water and Sanitation sparked her interest in researching the struggle that communities had with accessing water in the country.
Her research explored the social factors and community's social cohesion in water conservation. With her paper, Ms. Kumang hopes to see if the Key Performance Areas and Enablers from the National Disaster Management Framework of 2005 as a tool to be used in reducing water scarcity through the behaviour change of end users will yield positive results. Ultimately, the goal is to strike a balance between taking care of the limited water resources in the Northern Cape Province for both farmers and communities.