Relief supplies and field officers deployed to MOI

The Government through the National Disaster Council (NDC) office is sending relief supplies to Malaita Outer Islands (MOI).

A statement from NDC said 50 tonnes of rice have been loaded into a chartered carrier vessel and set to depart Honiara port tonight.

“A total of 2727 bags of rice should be delivered on the islands in the next two days.

“The relief supply route will start at Luaniua to Pelau and cross to Sikaiana islands,” the statement said.

MOI continues to experience food shortage seeing the impacts of salt water intrusion and storm surges affecting their garden patches. Also the lack of frequent shipping services to the islands poses another challenge to cater for the Polynesian outlying islands growing population.

The statement adds that National Disaster Operations Committee (N-DOC) sector field officers are also ready for deployment to the islands on this trip.

“Officers of the Livelihood, Education, Health, Safety and Security (police) sectors. Other supporting agencies include Immigrations, Customs and Bio-security.

“They will conduct scoping activities and improve set-up of the SIG COVID-19 response since MOI has been recently included in the declared emergency boundary zone due to threat from neighbouring PNG,” the NDC statement explains.

The NDC statement further adds that the trip will transit Auki to take aboard nearly 50 officers of various divisions of Malaita Province.

“Malaita line ministries and P-DOC teams are expected to board the vessel during a stop-over at Auki.

“Malaita team will oversee distribution of the supplies as well.

“This trip also help provincial government officers to deliver their continuous services to the remote island group,” the statement said.

NDC’s National Disaster Management Office recently completed distribution of relief supplies to communities affected by tropical cyclone Harold early this year for parts of Honiara, Guadalcanal and Makira.

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With photos