By HARLYNE JOKU
THE National Emergency Centre has been having difficulty receiving accurate data from Oro and Milne Bay on the actual internally displaced people (IDP), care centres, progress report on food distribution and non-food relief aid.
This was revealed by acting director of the National Disaster Centre Martin Mose last Friday.
He also raised concerns in a recent report before Christmas to the Minister for Inter-Government Relations Job Pomat.
The Dec 17 report titled “National Situation Report 3 Oro Flood Disaster” was the third so far furnished to the minister.
Mr Mose recommended that the national and provincial emergency operation centres managed information flows in a timely manner so the limited resources available would assist the vulnerable communities.
He encouraged humanitarian partners to interact with national and provincial authorities in assessing communities in most need.
Mr Mose said Government agencies needed to attend national coordination team meetings to prepare early recovery plans.
He further confirmed that the Oro disaster data was inaccurate during a presentation of a cheque for K15,000 to assist the centre by Indonesian embassy officials Agus Rasyid and Raden Sandjaya last Friday.
He told the media, who attended the presentation, no situation reports had been made to the centre since the state of emergency (SoE) was imposed.
“We have yet to receive situation reports from the SoE. There is a lot of information on the ground but lacks professional coordination for daily briefs,” he said.
Mr Mose said he required a situation report furnished to his office on a daily basis.
He said the centre had been unable to map the most affected areas due to lack of information.
“The centre established a daily telephone conference with Popondetta, however, this has not worked effectively as the Popondetta team failed to avail themselves at the time set for the conference,” Mr Mose said.
He said while information management continued to challenge accurately targeted distribution of relief supplies, analysis indicated that impacted communities still needed to be assessed.
Mr Mose, however, said progress had been made in the distribution of supplies to villages in Tufi and Itukuma local level government areas.
A total of 667 care centres had been identified by the health sector, and 9,563 IDPs and 1,872 houses had been destroyed by the flooding, a recent report stated.
Mr Mose said deaths related to the disaster were 150.
He said K29 million was allocated by the Government to assist the centre in which K22 million had been spent on operations including delivery of rations, chopper and ship hires.
“It is an expensive exercise,” Mr Mose said.
He added the SoE was now into the recovery phase.
Mr Mose also thanked the Indonesian Embassy for their donation.