THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WELFARE, MORALE AND DISASTER RESPONSE MANAGEMENT AMONG THE INFANTRY PERSONNEL

Abstract

The disaster always has an effect on person, financial, economical, trust issues, leadership and much more. It takes a lot of hard work and high intensity in managing the disaster. Infantry personnel is one of the mover in managing the disaster in Malaysia that provide response and conduct search and rescue. Welfare and morale are part of the elements that contributed in the disaster response management. However, the issues arises when some individual person only satisfied and do their job when welfare security is provided. The low morale also was influenced due to over working hours among the personnel. Thus, this study is aims to determine the relationship between infantry personnel’s welfare and morale with effective disaster response management. Descriptive approach is used where the interviews were conducted with the infantry personnel in Sarawak. All the data were transcribed and categorized into themes and analysed using content analysis. All the ethical principles also were followed. Hence, the findings showed that infantry personnel have high morale and satisfied with the welfare provided by the military towards themselves and their families. The study recommended to provide fair welfare such as balance working hour, medical and counselling, more job rotation and cooperate among each other and community in performing disaster response management. Therefore, the personnel’s satosfaction on welfare and morale leads to the successful of disaster response and management.