Leadership during Flood Disaster in a Selected Community in Pahang, Malaysia

Abstract

 

Flooding is a yearly phenomenon, particularly to the state of Pahang in the eastern region of Malaysia. The floods usually happen during the monsoon season and this has affected the lives of the community in this state. Indeed, leadership plays an important role in ensuring effective disaster response and management. The objective of this study is to gain a true picture of the problems faced by the local community leaders in a selected housing area in Pahang, Malaysia. This study is to examine the community leaders’ support and behavior as well as the community’s perception on their leaders in managing floods that occur every year during the monsoon season. This study uses the exploratory descriptive approach in which interviews were conducted with the community leaders. Data from the interviews were transcribed and categorized to identify common themes. The findings showed that there is leadership support such as moral support, taking care of community’s welfare during disaster as well as seminars and discussions in preparation for disaster were also frequently held. However, it is found that there are two groups of leaders with different political ideology and this has affected effective disaster response. The community also perceives their leaders as somewhat weak and have poor leadership skills. It is crucial that both the leaders and the community have respect and cooperation with each other as community leaders play a critical role in managing disaster and their behaviours can affect the perception of the community, thus successful disaster response and management.

 

Keywords: Leadership, Community, Disaster response and management, Malaysia.