More money needed after PNG flooding disaster

Transcript

The Disaster Coordinator in Papua New Guinea's Southern Highlands Province says more money is needed in order to help up to 40 thousand people affected by recent heavy floods.

Martin Pat says villages have been swept away by landslides, food gardens lost, and houses and roads washed away by the floods that have killed at least four people.

He told Jamie Tahana that the 82 thousand US dollar mobilisation fund released by the government is about to be exhausted and more money is needed to get basic supplies to areas in need.

MARTIN PAT: The 200,000 funding through the national disaster centre in Moresby for mobilisation is almost at the point of where we need more funds. Most of these funds are spent on the chopper [helicopter] hire doing rapid assessment and the other area where we are spending money is on food. Because we need basic food like cooking oil, rice, noodles, a bit of protein like tinned fish, and all this sort of thing to the most affected areas. You are looking at out of the five electorates, four electorates were affected one way or another either by landslide of flooding... Gradually the rainfall has slightly dropped but the weather is not improving. As I am speaking to you I can see the weather is very poor and we are not able to continue our food relief supply ... so we definitely need [more] funding for the infrastructure as well as the relief operations. I believe that the national government and provincial government are looking into that as well.

JAMIE TAHANA: What is the scale of the disaster? Because I understand 40,000 people have been affected and there have been about four deaths, possibly more. Just how big is this?

MP: Well there is a working committee on the ground. There is a committee comprising of the district offices, LLG offices, who are actually going down in detail. They are processing and assessing the losses and the destroyed property and all that sort of thing. So we are still collecting the data and it will be complied and presented to the National Disaster [office].

JT: So clearly we haven't be able to reach every village. When do you hope to have that assessment done by?

MP: By the end of this week we should have all the reports.

JT: Back to the money, you need more. How much more do you think you'll need?

MP: Well,  the national government has made a commitment of five million. It has got to be shared between Gulf that was also hit. Gulf is another province. We don't know how much exactly it is. But with the government giving 500,000 that is forthcoming - [that will] beef up and support the operation.