The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) needs to beef up its disaster management efforts after the region was hammered by deadly storms that left a path of destruction in their wake, its new chief said Friday. Secretary-general Lim Jock Hoi, a veteran Bruneian diplomat, pointed to a tropical storm that battered the southern Philippines last month leaving at least 240 dead and tens of thousands displaced. Also in December, a tropical cyclone pounded Indonesia’s main island of Java and killed at least 41 people, with tens of thousands forced from their homes by severe flooding and landslides. “Our region is disaster-prone,” Lim said at his inauguration ceremony at ASEAN’s Secretariat in Jakarta. “This underscores the need to strengthen ASEAN cooperation in disaster management and humanitarian assistance.” Published in Daily Times, January 6th 2018.