PNG officials meet to develop drought plan

Transcript

The chairman of Papua New Guinea's National Disaster Management Centre, Dickson Guina, says  two days of meetings this week have made it clear that the drought's impact will worsen.

El Nino induced frost and drought have wrought havoc across much of the country and and as Mr Guina told Don Wiseman, the impact will become more severe over the next several months.

DICKSON GUINA: It will scale up because of the fact that the provinces that are now in the last five months categorised as category three may go up to category four. And those category four may go up to category five. So it would escalate.

DON WISEMAN: There is a strand along the north coast where things have started to improve quite considerably with the rain.

DG: That would not immediately improve the situation because even if the rain comes it will take a while, a few months for crops to grow and yield and all these things. So the situation may not be improving even though there are some rains around these provinces.

DW: As you say, generally speaking, it will get worse. What's the national disaster agency doing?

DG: We have a strategy in place. We have done a rapid assessment when the El Nino came in. We did a strategy on how best we can mitigate this situation in the short term, the medium term and the long term. So our strategies are there. We had two day-long meetings -one for the provincial co-ordinators to come in and tell us where they are at (with coping with the drought etc) at the moment, what are the challenges, what are the gaps, maybe what are the bottlenecks, those type of things have been discussed. Yesterday was with the donors, all our donor partners. We have a strategy that we want to have support from donors, where they can come in to fill in the gaps in terms of technical assistance maybe opn the relief supplies and other logistic support, and all these things. So I think for me, as chairman of the disaster committee and of course the meetings that have gone for the last two days, I see that we have a common understanding that we can work along with our donor partners and other civil societies and churches, in order for us to meet those challenges that we are now going through.

DW: In terms of the assistance that you are providing to the affected people, what are you doing?

DG: We are giving them relief supplies in terms of water, in terms of food, basically rice and flour and of course noodles and biscuits, and water supply. And of course, in the long-term, we are looking at drought-resistant crops, working with NARI (National Agricultural Research Institute) and of course the Department of Agriculture and Livestock in terms of nutrition and all this. We are looking at the holistic approach in addressing the situation because we understand that drought will always come back. Within the next three to five years, it could come back again, so we need to be better prepared for the next drought. Sustainability and long-term plan is pretty good, and that's what we want to do as a government and a nation.