Food relief on its way after Solomons' heavy rain

Transcript

The Solomon Islands National Disaster Management Office is gearing up to provide major food relief following heavy rain in the region.

Tropical cyclone Raquel and a subsequent tropical disturbance swept through the country at the start of the month, damaging houses and crops.

Initial reports estimate around 10-thousand people have been affected across seven of the nine provinces.

Teams are visiting the affected areas to assess the extent of the damage.

The director of the National Disaster Management Office, Loti Yates, told Tom Furley most of the damage has been done to the food and agriculture sector.

LOTI YATES: What has now become very obvious is that the impact would be felt across seven provinces out of the nine and it will be mostly in the food and agriculture sector. So we can see from the initial information that we have that major food relief is a must following confirmation of damages by the assessment teams.

TOM FURLEY: And so what is the NDMO doing at the moment? I understand that you are sending out some assessment teams are they sort of finished yet? What is the plan at the moment?

LY: The plan is as you said, the provincial emergency operation centres have deployed assessors from the provincial headquarters to the community. This is going to take at least 10 to 14 days. Once the teams are back we will then analyse the reports that come in and then respond according to the reports that we have.

TF: So there hasn't been any aid or emergency relief given out yet?

LY: Only for the low lying atolls of Ontong Java, we deployed the Patrol boat yesterday with some rice and some non-food items from the red cross as well as some tarpaulins from the NDMO. The first two or three weeks will be okay because people will be harvesting what they can from their gardens. It is after three weeks onwards that you start to feel the impacts of root crops rotting away and that is when food shortage will be felt.

TF: But do you see that by then your assessments will be done and you will be able to get food aid out to those people?

LY: We hope to do that, we hope to have that ready by then but again we are challenged with resources here and the NDMO relies on the government to fund its operations so we rely mostly on when funds become available then we can respond but right now the NDMO actually has all the plans in place to immediately deploy as soon as funds are made available.

TF: When is that likely?

LY: I don't really know at this stage, we are hoping that it may be in a week or two.