Kalinoe: Provincial governments need FSV units

THERE is a need for provincial governments to establish within their administrations a section to deal with family and sexual violence (FSV) issues, says an official.
FSV action committee national coordinator Marcia Kalinoe made the comments during a meeting on multi-sectorial services’ response to violence against women and girls in Port Moresby on Tuesday.
Kalinoe said they had adopted an all-inclusive strategy to address the issue at the national level.
“This issue does not affect people in Port Moresby alone but it affects everyone wherever you are,” Kalinoe said.
She said to provide services they had to mobilise the resources down to the people’s level not only in terms of formal services but other services, groups or informal areas.
These groups will assist in asset mapping, provide community-based ways to help in addressing the issues on the ground. “Primary prevention in terms of advocating, educating and institutionalising your trainers and in terms of secondary presentation, especially for front line service providers, will be available,” Kalinoe said.
“Long term services for tertiary prevention in terms of counselling will also be available there.”
“We still have a long way to go.
“We have seen what happened as there are a lot of challenges especially on our children and other specific groups of people who are vulnerable to such issues.”
Kalinoe said people from a range of professions such as police officers, nurses and teachers were capable of providing counselling with the information they had.
“One does no need a degree to do this job but we have police, nurses, teachers and others who can provide counselling as well,” he said.