Inia Seruiratu [Source: Fijian Government]

Minister for Disaster Management officially opened the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Post Disaster Needs Assessment Training.

Inia Seruiratu highlighted the need for civil servants participating in the training to make good use of the opportunity it offered.

He conveyed this when addressing participants of the virtual training.

The PDNA training will focus on the Water Sector PDNA in the next two weeks.

Seruiratu says the training such as PDNA was critical given the frequency and extent of natural hazards affecting Pacific Island Countries (PICs).

He also commend the Pacific Community (SPC) for its partnership with UNDP over the years in collaborating to facilitate the PDNA training around the Pacific and now, they’ve brought it home again to Fiji.

Minister Seruiratu reiterated that the PDNA training was crucial enough to ensure that the fundamentals of post-disaster assessments were embedded for recovery planning, feeding into Government’s overarching national development agenda.

He adds the PDNA not only gave Fiji the opportunity to better position its collective capacity to respond when the disaster occurred, but it also encompassed a long-term strategic approach on how best to mitigate, adapt and minimise the risk from future disasters which have become regular than ever before.

Minister Seruiratu also launched the UNDP-ADB Partnership Project on Building Disaster Resilient Infrastructure through Enhanced Knowledge during this week’s meeting.

Under this project, four countries, including Fiji will be assisted.