Lewaqai Assures Residents of Help During Disasters
Our teams are on standby to assist. This was the assurance given by the Divisional Commissioner Western, Apolosi Lewaqai, to residents of the Western Division.
Mr Lewaqai said his teams had been on standby during the adverse weather conditions affecting the division for the past few weeks.
During the recent floods, he said his office was immediately alerted by the Fiji Meteorological Office in Nadi.
The message was passed onto the provisional administrators, district officers and first time responders.
“We had called a meeting with all the heads of divisions here in the Western Division and started to prepare in terms of if there was any need of assistance,” Mr Lewaqai said.
“After our assessment we have seen that there is no need to activate some of our evacuation centres, our teams, especially our line agencies and ministries and schools have already been notified, especially for schools and community halls that we usually use for evacuation centres.
“For the past few days our teams have already started to carry out assessments, mostly our infrastructures have been affected, Irish crossings, bridges and roads.”
He said the Fiji Roads Authority (FRA), Ministry of Agriculture and the Social Welfare Department were also in the West carrying out their respective assessments.
“The FRA team is also in our team here and they have been continually notified on the infrastructure that has been affected,” he said.
“And for them they are doing the assessment at the same time, they attend to the infrastructure that needs to be fixed just to allow for accessibilities by the communities that have been affected.
“On the same note, our team from agriculture is also carrying out their assessment, but from the Ministry of Agriculture is that we haven’t received any concern from commercial farmers.” Mr Lewaqai was grateful to the support by all departments that usually provided assistance during disasters.
We had called a meeting with all the heads of divisions here in the Western Division and started to prepare in terms of if there was any need of assistance