Papua New Guinea urged to prioritise drought response

Transcript

The latest disaster assessments in Papua New Guinea have found the cost of getting food relief to drought stricken communities is prohibitive.

They recommend the prioritisation of relief to the estimated 800,000 people living in areas determined to be critically lacking in food.

At the same time a co-author of the compilation of 200 reports from government, NGOs, church organisations and individuals in drought- and frost-affected regions says immediate action is needed to alleviate ongoing suffering.

Mike Bourke spoke with Koroi Hawkins about their findings.

MIKE BOURKE:  Yes we have assembled a lot of information there has been formal reports done by the government of Papua New Guinea, one of the churches, several of the major NGOs and then lots and lots of informal material from all sorts of people. I have been sending emails and phone calls all around Papua New Guinea so we have brought over 200 reports together from very many sources.

KOROI HAWKINS: And how would you see this being used or how do you recommend that it be used by authorities in positions to help these people?

MB: I think there is two things, the first thing is to say this is the big picture. We have got these reports together, this is not random across the landscape it is falling into certain ecological zones. So the first thing is then some further and more detailed assessments. But only in the highest priority areas and those assessments are planned by a number of groups at the moment. But the other thing is it is not the time just to keep doing assessment after assessment. Really it is a time to move in and getting food and other aid to the people in the very highest priorities. So we have sort of flagged the very highest priority areas saying well these people are doing it extremely tough now and there are some real problems and we can't just wait for another six weeks to get more assessments.

KH: And which areas are these and what kind of hardships are they facing?

MB: The first one is very high altitude we are talking above two thousand two hundred metres. Between twenty two hundred and twenty eight hundred metres above sea level. So what happened here people got hit by a series of repeated frosts in July, August and some in September and it just wipes out everything there is just nothing left, no sweet potato, no English potato, nothing. That is one particular zone. There is locations on the edges of the central high lands, not so much on the central highlands where there is money and roads but on the edge of it where there is no roads and then particularly in the south of the country not that far from Queensland in fact. Very, very remote locations in Western Province due north of Queensland and then some very small islands in Milne Bay. So they are the locations, in terms of impact, the biggest impact we are seeing is a number of extremely remote locations. We are talking about places that can be five, six, seven days walk from the nearest place where there is a shop. And that is for a fit young man not for a family with children, it would take longer. And we are getting strong indications of an increase in the death rate in a number of these locations. The number of people involved is not great the number of areas is not great. We have only got three locations where there seems fairly unambiguous evidence or indications of a rising death rate. But we are seeing now is a very consistent pattern with what we saw back in the last really big drought and that was in 1997.

KH: And just looking at action here, you have crunched some numbers and you have sort of worked out roughly what it will cost authorities is it reasonable within what Papua New Guinea usually funds for disaster relief or is it, will it require overseas help?

MB: The numbers are huge, they are really large. The reason I put those numbers in is to illustrate that and saying look if you are going to feed even a modest number of people, a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand people. Even to do that it costs vast amounts of money so I am going to flag how expensive it is not just to buy the food aid which is rice and tuna fish in that context. But particularly for transport. Once you are transporting food or anything in a light twin engine aircraft or in a helicopter the cost just goes through the roof it just becomes really huge. So the reason I put those numbers is just to flag how very expensive it is and I guess to focus people's attention in saying you can only work in the highest priority locations because you just simply can't work everywhere. You can't provide food for everyone it is just impossibly expensive, not only for the Papua New Guinea government but even for the big donors frankly.

KH: And now at this stage you have sort of mentioned what you think should be done. On the ground while you were in these places was anything already being done are authorities actually mobilising or is this something they are yet to do?

MB: Look there is a fair bit more to be done particularly in the high priority areas some food has got out it is uneven where it has got to. Um there is a whole lot of actors involved there is the government of Papua New Guinea obviously but there is some churches and some NGOs that are providing some food aid but it is, overall the volume is fairly small and its a bit scattered and I guess what we are arguing is that you have really got to concentrate on the highest priority areas because that is where things are really bad and they are getting worse. Much of Papua New Guinea has had rain since November, December into January now but particularly in the far South of the country there has been very little rain and things are continuing the situation is continuing to deteriorate.

KH: From all these reports how many people are affected in your view?

MB: Well our assessment at this stage says in what we call category four and category five that is where food is very, very short or extremely short there is over 800 thousand people. But I need to emphasise that that is counting everyone who sits in an administrative unit what we call, known as local level government areas. Not everyone in that LLGA areas will be similarly impacted so that number will come down considerably at this stage we have cast the net wide so we don't exclude people and there is another two rounds of assessments going on conducted by different groups working out of Port Moresby this January and they will be zooming in on the locations that we have identified and then really trying to identify the people who um, who are in the greatest need.