The flash flooding that occurred in recent months has caused great damage to the people of Central Province and Governor Rufina Peter has called on the Government for immediate assistance.
She informed the House the extent of the floods that had caused widespread damages to food gardens and vital infrastructure and urged the Government for relief assistance.
“Since February and March of this year, the province has experienced bad weather and from May 29 to 31st, we had experienced three days of torrential rainfall that resulted in flash flooding, that affected a lot of people almost more than one-third of the population of Central Province.
“So the impact of the flooding has been very catastrophic many houses have collapsed and people have moved to higher grounds, public buildings such as schools and hospitals have been affected, the floods have also affected food gardens plus livestock so that has already affected the live hood of the people.
“The roads have also been affected on both highways and into the provincial and district roads. We require about 3 million from each district from the 5fivedistricts that will amount to about 15 million and for the roads and bridges.
“That will be about 10million each a total of about 65million for each of the five districts ad that is from the preliminary assessment but when the flooding levels go down and the team go out for more assessment these costs seem to be going up,” said Governor Peter.
She asked Prime Minister, James Marape on what actions does the government intend to take in terms of mitigating the effects of flooding.
“I want to assure the governor, I’ll get the Defense and the National Disaster agency to look into your submissions especially in regards to the relief that is short and whatever we can practically assist in immediate we’ll send the immediate relief but in the long term for the road reconstruction and schools and etc.
“We will give some support and I’d like to indicate that DSIP support and PSIP Support is also coming they could put some funds there. I will also find some funds to top up but I will have an opportunity to give a full respond when I’m in premier of this report.
“Hopefully next week when Defense advises me whether through the Minister or myself I could have a time with the Governor to indicate on the level of support we can give to Central and those that are affected by this disaster.” Said PM Marape.
According to the Disaster assessment preliminary report taken by the Provincial and Dsitruct administration, 90 percent of the people said this was quite a severe flooding and almost 80 percent said they were the worst flooding ever experienced in the province.