JAKARTA, Jan. 7 (Xinhua) -- More budget allocation has been approved by government and the parliament to finance anticipation and mitigation activities this year so as to improve public resiliency and alertness in addressing possible disasters in the future, Indonesian President Joko Widodo said here on Monday.
Part of the expanded allocation would be used to finance education on disaster in schools, aimed at better preparing children since their early ages to aware on risk of disasters as the nation sits in earth's ring of fire that makes it prone from disaster, the president added.
"I already requested disaster education should be carried out consistently since early ages. It should be submitted in curriculums in our national education system so as to make us and young generation prepared to encounter disasters," the president told a cabinet meeting held in his office here.
Indonesia's National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) said earlier that the nation would continue to face natural disasters throughout this year, to be dominated by hydrometeorology events that consisted of flood, landslide and hurricanes.
The BNPB's disaster projection was based on significant expansion of damages in river bank areas as well as on critical land.
According to BNPB Spokesperson Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, expansion of damaged area around the river banks has reached 110,000 hectares per year, while the critical land areas stood at 14 million hectares at present.
Besides the hydrometeorology disasters, BNPB also predict that forest fire would possibly occur again this year.
Indonesia saw frequent major disasters consisted of volcano eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis in several areas throughout 2018 that claimed the lives of thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands others.
