24 unconfirmed deaths blamed on PNG drought

Transcript

There are unconfirmed reports from Chimbu Province in Papua New Guinea that 24 people have died as a result of the severe drought hitting the Highlands.

The Chimbu provincial disaster coordinator, Michael Ire Appa, told Don Wiseman he understands the deaths, which are yet to be confirmed, are due to a lack of food and poisoned water.

MICHAEL IRE APPA: That's the figure that we received from the districts. We have yet to confirm this, but this is occuring in the rural community so it's a bit hard to confirm. But I think it's positive because the drought has been here for almost three months now and in areas that were affected by the drought, there's a serious food shortage, including water, and some of the districts have not report, so there my be more than that.
 
DON WISEMAN: They died of a lack of food?

MIA: A lack of food and maybe other related drought (impacts) and poisoned water. I can't really confirm it, what's the nature of their deaths.

DW: You've been getting food aid coming through from the national government haven't you, in the last few days?

MIA: According to the national government, there's the five million kina (US$1.75m) budget for food relief. So far we have received about six tonnes of rice bags and two tonnes of flour bags, which is not enough for the entire population that we're trying to feed. And apart from that, we need to transport these things into the remote areas. We still don't have the logistics from the national government. The supplies are still sitting here in Kundiawa. There's no way to haul them out to the affected areas.

DW:  So you have not been able to get any of that aid through to the people that need it yet?

MIA: Yes, we are unable to deliver that because we don' have the logistics.

DW: And how many vehicles do you need?

MIA: These land cruisers, they load about thirty bags. To deliver about four thousand bags, approximately it's about 133 land cruisers to deliver four thousand rice bags. And the cost of these land cruisers is about eight hundred (kina) a day, including (indecipherable) which is about two or three hundred, so that's about a thousand a day for transport alone. So this kind of money is not made available for me to do deliveries.

DW: The general sense that we're getting from people we speak to in Port Moresby is that they're keeping a careful watch on things and waiting for full assessments, but that while there are people affected, it's not too bad at the moment. But you are painting a very different picture in your province.

MIA: I think my province, the drought started in June. Now we're in the fourth month and the national assessment team was here last week. They flew over by chopper and they have seen the situation here. Now sweet potato is the staple food for most of the people here, about 95% of them. So with this drought, there's starvation here because we don't have any alternative source of food.

DW: So you've got all these deaths that have occurred, are you fearing that you're going to lose a whole lot more people?

MIA: Oh especially children. It appears that we may end up losing some of them, because in the two worst affected areas, there's hardly any vegetables, people are resorting to bananas but bananas are not in abundance to feed the entire family with. There may be a possibility of more people dying.