News

PM wants solution to flooding problems

April 2, 2012 7:37 pm

Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama says there is an urgent need for solutions to avoid floods destroying the livelihood of people and properties in the future.

Bainimarama who is visiting flood affected areas in the western division visited Sigatoka and Nadi yesterday and moves to other towns today.

He says the devastation caused by the latest floods was enormous.

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“I don’t know how to describe it and this place has been devastated especially the western division. They thought the floods in 2009 were bad but this worse and three to four time worse. We will get over this it will be couple of weeks and it will be a while before we stand on our two feet especially those who have been affected but we will get back on our feet. We have to make some hard and fast decisions on what to do with infrastructure, with our rivers and our dredging together with a whole lot of other issues so we don’t continue to get bogged down every time there is heavy rain.”

He says it was in times like this that a special group of people were often forgotten about.

“There is a group of people that we tend to forget and those are the little kids. Especially the newly born and I just came out of one evacuation centre and there is four-day-old girl there who was born on the eve of the flooding and they brought her in and she was sleeping like a baby as they say. We forget to bring them into our plans in the evacuation centres and think about things like what type of milk they drink and whether they are drinking clean water and of course diapers. We are trying to organise all these with people running the evacuation centres.”

Meanwhile, the PM says he is yet to directly receive any word from overseas counterparts wanting to assist his government for recovery.

However, he adds the PM’s Flood Appeal will now remain open for those wanting to contribute.

“No but I think they getting in touch with the DISMAC office and with Permanent Secretary Regional and maybe Ministry of Foreign Affairs but they are organising that side of the house. There has been a request from lot of people especially the private sector to have it extended and even before the floods that came in last week, we had planned to extend it and now it is extended for sure.”