Many families affected by the recent floods in the Aroma Coast of Abau District, Central Province has raised concerns and dissatisfaction on how the relief supplies were distributed to individual families as well as dissatisfaction on the amount of relief food supplies provided to them.
The Ward Member for Ward 2, Mr. Ila Pat Ila’ava, said that 4 wards in the Aroma Local Level Government (LLG) that where affected have jointly expressed disappointment on how the disaster relief supplies were not equally distributed among the households.
“K60, 000 was given as disaster relief fund from the district to Aroma Coast llg, and these funds were used to purchase food supplies,” said Ila.
“Sadly this money was not enough for the 4 wards, because if lucky, one family got a packet of rice, noodles or an EM Nau biscuit for one person.”
Ila stated that this is very disappointing because the supplies was not enough, and this was due to the fact that there was no disaster officer on ground to make proper assessment of the situation.
“There was no disaster officer from the district or the provincial disaster offices and I do not know where and how they got their data from to send such relief supplies.”
“The disaster fund was K60, 000 but the food supplies bought were estimated about K2, 000 or less for each ward in Aroma.”
Ila added that the disaster office has to come clear about where the rest of the funds had gone to. He further added that, most classrooms were under water because they were built on ground level, some live stocks were washed away and others moved to higher ground, but sadly all gardens were under water.
Sections of the roads were under water, culverts were washed away and bridges damaged, thus affecting transportation of food supplies to the trade store, cutting of fuel and medical supplies as well.
“This is not a new situation, every year around the wet season time, this is expected and the disaster office needs to be on its feet to address this.”
“You cannot just seat in the office and call ward Councilors to go pick up relief supplies, this is not how the officer works.”
Ila is now calling on the district and provincial disaster office to do its jobs correctly and every time a disaster occurs, disaster officers must be present on the ground to assess the situation, collect appropriate and accurate data then send adequate relief supplies to the disaster victims.