Masange urges districts to take ownership of disasters

National

MOROBE disaster coordinator Charlie Masange has urged the nine district administrations of the province to allocate funding for relief assistance during natural disasters.
Masange said a collaborative effort was needed to address disaster in the province.
He said the provincial disaster office had “scarce resources” so it was important that districts should take ownership of disasters in their areas.
“Each district is getting K10 million as district services improvement services programme funds,” he said.
“Some of this money can be put aside for disaster relief.”
“Each district can set aside K500,000 for instance. We do not have funds to respond to everybody.
“They can keep the money or they can deposit it into our disaster trust account.”
Masange said the cost of transporting relief supplies and enabling logistics arrangements ate into their budget.  He said the National Disaster Centre in Port Moresby only intervened when the disaster was major and affected many people.
Masange said the important thing was for the District Development Authority to capture the disaster plan in their meetings and allocate funding to it.