Building resilient communities
Fourteen communities around the country faced with the impacts of climate change were assisted by Government last year.
Ministry of Rural and Maritime Development and National Disaster Management permanent secretary, Meleti Bainimarama said the projects were identified by the communities that came through the Tikina meetings and Provincial Council meetings and were assessed by the National Disaster Management Office.
“The projects include eleven evacuation centres; coastal protection; river bank protection and saltwater intrusion protection,” Mr Bainimarama said.
“In some projects we needed to upgrade the evacuation centres to make it cyclone resistant; for some communities we needed to stabilize the river banks to avoid flooding and improve coastal protection.
“These disaster risk reduction projects are about building resilient communities and reducing risk and losses in any event of a natural disaster.”
In addition, Mr Bainimarama said that eleven of the projects are nearing completion while three projects would be completed this year due to technical issues.
“The different projects involved various impacts.”
A sum of $2million budgetary allocation was provided to the National Disaster Management last year to implement disaster risk reduction projects.