BY JOHN HOUANIHAU
THE NATIONAL Emergency operation centre will soon deliver a consolidated report to each National Disaster Operation Centre sector committee chairs.
The combined report comes following a 2-day workshop held by the national disaster operation committee on the 16 and 17 recently in Honiara.
“With regards to the 2021-2022 Tropical cyclone preparedness planning, the National emergency operation centre currently finalising a consolidating a report containing the discussions of the workshop.
“Thus a consolidated report will be sent out to each NDOC sector committee chairs to mandate them to carry on their preparedness plans for responses to a tropical cyclone,’’ said Baragamu.
He said that the aim of the workshop is to get the six sector committees under the national disaster management in Solomon Islands which can be activated during times of disasters.
Mr. Baragamu said that the six sector committees include health, education, protection, infrastructure, livelihood, and camp management committees.
The six sectors with their agencies were part of the workshop that runs for a 2 days’ workshop held at the Mendana hotel.
He said that the yearly workshop is to check on the operational readiness of all sector committees should there be a tropical cyclone this season as predicted by the SI-met office.
“That is one of the key outcomes. It looks at the current capabilities, capacities, gaps and the priority areas each sector together with their agencies to respond realistically and practically, and how would they get support from other sectors if they cannot meet these priority areas,” he said.
As part of the ongoing preparedness, Mr. Baragamu said that the NEOC with the support of UNDP will stage a disaster information management workshop and an initial assessment training in the coming weeks.
“It’s a sort of assessment training. The information on disaster management is to train key personals within the NEOC sector committees on how to deal with disaster information management.
“We are working with UNDP to conduct a joint training in terms of disaster information management and initial damage assessment,’’ said Baragamu.
He adds that the NDMO will also hold refresher training next month for the national emergency response team.
In 2019 Solomon Islands established the national emergency response team that comprise different discipline that can or work and deal with disaster.
“They specifically trained on how to do the work during a disaster. Nationally there is a total net of 35 people (Personal from Govt, NGOs at the provincial level) currently doing the training,’’ he said.
He said in an exclusive interview that ongoing awareness preparedness on cyclones will be disseminated through media outlets and through telecommunication providers.
“The NDMO plan was already established and details of which models to be used will be further taken up by NDMO programs in rolling out the awareness and ongoing communication aspect in terms of our preparedness for a cyclone,’’ said the officer.
Mr. Baragamu thank DFAT (Australia) through UNDP for funding the 2021-2022 Tropical preparedness planning and the ongoing activity workshops financially and technically during the workshop.
