29th September 2016 The Department of Disaster Management (NEMO) under the Ministry of MEIDECC today hosted a workshop to develop an emergency logistics framework facilitated by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and Save the Children (STC) under the Pacific Emergency and Response Logistics (PEARL) project.
The CEO of MEIDECC Mr. Paula Pouvalu Ma’u told the gathering that preparedness is very important as well as knowing the guidelines to follow.
“Before a disaster hit, we must always be prepared and know what our respective roles are as it is important to know the guidelines and the logistics to follow. As of now, we will experience continuous disasters like Tropical Cyclone and this will help also as a capacity building for early preparations to response.”
The workshop covers the following areas; identifying the emergency logistics strengths and gaps, determine the emergency logistics training needs of organizations and individuals, discuss the methodology to review the Logistics Capacity Assessment, explain the development of Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for logistics and to provide an overview of the need for a logistics concept of operations.
Facilitator of the workshop Mr. Alan Johnson from WFP stated that getting all the stakeholders and the organizations involved in humanitarian emergencies would give them ideas on their viewpoints and logistics to ensure Tonga is ready.
“The participants will have some ideas on the things they need, that is how to provide food or non-food items to the people of the affected area and know how it goes out the outer islands. We want to design a training model for people to go through in terms of warehousing, transport, port, aircraft, procurements and how to manage the logistics supply channel in an emergency. We will design the inputs and return back later on and run another training to standardize logistics practices in Tonga,” he said.
Joining Mr. Johnson in facilitating the program was Mr. Bret Bestie from WFP and Nathan Klenner from STC.
The World Food Programme support governments in strengthening their emergency preparedness and response capacities to mitigate the effects of disasters and reduce their impacts on vulnerable populations.
The Pacific region regularly experiences large-scale disaster events that outstrip national response capacities. Strengthening the logistical preparedness and capacity of regional governments is the core of WFP’s Pacific strategy.
ENDS
Issued by the: Ministry of Meteorology, Energy, Information, Disaster Management, Environment, Climate Change and Communications
