Fiji aid commander in Lau says he is 800 tents short

Transcript

An army commander in charge of the aid mission to the Lau group in Fiji says tarpaulins are not good enough and he needs 800 more tents for people to live in for up to two years.

Commander Humphrey Tawake says there was a delay in delivering tents on Vanua Balavu as there is a lack of vehicles and fuel.
 
As families wait while cramped in the few remaining houses, he says the hundreds of tents that have been sitting at the military post at the local school will be delivered urgently.

Commander Humphrey Tawake spoke to Alex Perrottet in Lomaloma village.

HUMPHREY TAWAKE: The devastation is really bad, severe.  I think the worst the island has ever experienced or the whole of Fiji.  The plan now is probably going into the completion of the first phase and second phase.  We've delivered the food, water and some shelter to those that have been severely affected, in terms of shelter.  Food is enough on the island, now we've been provided by the government for one month.  We've got teams.  The second line now is to restore the essential services, roads for accessibility, communications, which is very important.  Which is currently limited as of now, but hopefully it will be up and running, hopefully two weeks.  We only have four lines that are available through satellite phone, so it will only be on priority needs.  On schools and government stations would be the priority station.  Of building, of construction teams and from the assistance of the New Zealand government and the New Zealand defence force, of which we are really grateful.  So that is the plan.  And lastly is reviving the local economy, as you can see, all the coconuts all down.  That is something that we are challenged for the next six months till three years.  Because it takes coconut trees to mature again, after all the devastation three to five years.

ALEX PERROTTET: And that depends so much on that, at what point do the locals stop being reliant on aid and at what point are they able to live off their own means again when something like this has happened.

HT: Yes, that is where the Ministry of Agriculture comes in.  I've got a photograph of a guy in one of the villages, he's back replanting his crops.  That is that initiative that we're trying to tell the local population here.  Your own survival, come back to normalcy.  However having said that you have to understand the trauma and the experience that these people have gone through.  It takes them time to revive their own self, their own livelihood back to normal.  And it is a challenge, a psychological state of mind that all of them have been in a very difficult and very bad experience that they've never experienced before.  This experience will live with them for the rest of their live.

AP: These big white tents here are obviously destined for these people, and there's piles and piles of them there.  And there's people that have started to make their own tents and their just all crowded into small houses.  How soon are those tents going to be set up in these villages?

HT: I've given a directive, that that is supposed to be done yesterday but we had a bit of difficulties.  All the vehicles here are privately owned, so you have to have an understanding that they pay for their own fuel and we have to make some sort of arrangement. That is a balanced approach of how they get the money.  However having said that those will be gone by this morning but we are still short of about 800 tents. I am pushing now - the tarpaulins are not good enough because the houses that I have seen here, we need tarpaulins for six months to two years, because some of the tarpaulins won't last. It will depend on the government but it is not just Vanua Balavu, it is 50 percent of Fiji.