Reko Disaster Committee Advances Future Plans

Reko Disaster Committee Advances Future Plans

Communities of Mberande, Mbokokibo and Moga in northeast Guadalcanal have already formed disaster committees to advance plans for awareness and training activities following a four-day workshop conducted by the National Disaster Management Office at Calvary village last week.

Reko disaster committee chairman Eric Miti said his committee will meet this Saturday to plan awareness talks for their more than 2000 people as well as a three or four-day village leaders training in late January or early February 2009.

Mr Miti also said he’s realized the importance of addressing risks before disasters happen so he’s determined to build a community centre they can use for evacuation in times of disaster.

He said he has already profiled the site and added that it should be completed as early as early next year.

“Once this completes, we will use it to conduct awareness, training and anything that will help to cement the ideas we gained from the training last week. It will also serve other purposes,” he said.

He said these plans will be discussed in this committee’s Saturday meeting:

• Awareness activities for all the villages in the district
• Towards end January or early February 2009, conduct a three or four-day training for all village leaders of Reko so they could understand and appreciate their roles and responsibilities in disaster management.
• His team of trainers will be ready to support those of Mberande and Moqa after the proposed Reko training, adding that representatives of those communities have already endorsed this plan right after the workshop last week.

Mr Miti also stressed that the training was one of the best to be conducted for his community and he wants to ensure everyone in the communities fully understand their roles and responsibilities before a disaster strikes.

The Reko District Disaster Committee Chairman also requested the NDMO to conduct other training programs in the future because the communities who live by these three rivers and others in the Plains always get affected by floods.

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