14th October, 2016 The National Emergency Management Office (NEMO) hosted a two day workshop aimed to assess disaster management capacity in Tonga. The two-day workshop held on 11-12 October was addressed by NEMO Director, Mr Leveni ‘Aho and was formally opened by Chief Medical Officer, Dr Reynold ‘Ofanoa.
The workshop was designed and facilitated by Oxfam and more than 20 participants attended, representing NEMO, government departments, NGOs, Tonga Red Cross Society and donors.
The workshop assessed what capacities and skills would be required to manage a category 5 cyclone in Tonga using an approach known as Humanitarian Capacity Self-Assessment.
“You don’t only need technical skills to respond to a disaster,” said facilitator Peter Chamberlain. “A range of capacities are needed – coordination, communication, logistics, knowledge of finance and funding systems and many others. This approach helps to consider all of these aspects and start taking practical steps to address them.”
The workshop participants identified strengths and weaknesses in the current system of disaster preparedness and agreed on an action plan to address some of the gaps highlighted by their analysis.
The Tonga Health Nutrition, Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Cluster played a key humanitarian coordination role, helped to organise the workshop and would take forward several of the recommendations.
ENDS
Issued by the: Ministry of Meteorology, Energy, Information, Disaster Management, Environment, Climate Change and Communications