RAWALPINDI: President Mamnoon Hussain on Thursday said that disaster management institutions and their personnel needed modern training to deal with natural calamities. The president said this while addressing the inaugural ceremony of the Surgeons General’s International Conference 2016 organised by the Army Medical College and Surgeons General Pakistan. The president said the National Disaster Management Authority and the National Institute of Disaster Management faced such situations often and bore the responsibility to deal with natural disasters and accidents. “It is necessary to arrange regular training programmes for these institutions,” he said. He said it was imperative to benefit from the knowledge and practices being followed by the developed world. The president said that Pakistan was among the countries where natural and unnatural disasters occurred frequently. However, he said, it was a matter of satisfaction that Pakistan’s institutions were capable of dealing with such situations. He said these institutions had set good examples of effective response not only in Pakistan but also abroad. He praised the services of the officers of the Army Medical Corps. Separately, Quaid-e-Azam University Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Javed Ashraf and COMSATS Institute of Information Technology Rector Dr Syed Junaid Zaidi called on the president on Thursday. Talking to them at separate meetings in Islamabad, Hussain said that education was the key to progress of nations and called for concerted efforts to improve the standard of education across the country.