Almost a month after a deadly earthquake, Papua New Guinea (PNG) is struggling to get aid to desperate survivors, having allocated just a fraction of its relief funds, while a rent dispute left disaster officials briefly locked out of their offices.
The scale of the emergency is testing the finances and capacity of one of the world’s poorest countries, after a magnitude 7.5 quake rocked its remote mountainous highlands on Feb. 26, killing 100 people, disaster and relief officials said.
Thousands of survivors have walked to remote airstrips and jungle clearings, awaiting helicopters bringing supplies of food, water and medicines, aid agencies and authorities said.
“To date, we do not have any money to do all the necessary things,” Tom Edabe, the disaster coordinator for the hardest-hit province of Hela, said by telephone from Tari, the provincial capital.
“[The] government is trying to assist and have budgeted some money, but to date we have not received anything ... we have only been given food and non-food items supplied by other” non-governmental organizations, he said.
Continuing aftershocks have rattled residents, who have had to collect water brought by daily rainstorms to ensure adequate supplies, Edabe said.
“The biggest thing that people need, apart from food, is water,” said James Pima, a helicopter pilot and flight manager at aviation firm HeliSolutions in the Western Highlands capital of Mt Hagen, about 170km from the disaster zone. “They don’t have clean water to cook or drink ... they are standing there staring. The expression on their faces is blank.”
His firm’s three helicopters fly relief missions “fully flat-out every day,” Pima said.
Destruction to roads and runways means that authorities must rely on helicopters to fly in relief, but while nimble, the craft can only carry smaller loads than fixed-wing aircraft and cannot fly during the afternoon thunderstorms.
The logistics problems wind all the way to PNG’s disaster center, where officials told reporters that they had been locked out of their office in the national capital of Port Moresby for two days last week after the government missed a rental payment.
“That was correct, Monday and Tuesday,” a spokeswoman said.
In a joint report with the UN published on Friday, the agency cited “lack of quality data” about food shortages, limited aircraft assets and “significant gaps” in sanitation support as being the biggest problems it faced.
The office of Papua New Guinean Prime Minister Peter O’Neill did not respond to emailed questions from reporters.
On his website, O’Neill has previously said that “there will be no quick fix, the damage from this disaster will take months and years to be repaired.”
The government had approved relief funds amounting to 450 million kina (US$138 million), O’Neill said initially, but a later statement said that only 3 million kina in initial relief — or less than 1 percent — had been allocated to the worst-hit areas.
In its budget of November last year, the government made plans to rein in spending and trim debt projected to stand at 25.8 billion kina this year.
The impoverished country is also missing its largest source of revenue after the quake forced a shutdown of Exxon Mobil Corp’s liquefied natural gas project, which has annual sales of US$3 billion at going LNG prices. The firm is still assessing quake damage at its facilities.
O’Neill last week hit out at critics of the aid effort for playing “political games,” while thanking Australia and New Zealand for military aircraft that provided assistance beyond the capacity of the Papua New Guinea Defense Force.
His political opponent, former Papua New Guinean prime minister Mekere Morauta, has called the government’s response “tardy” and inadequate.
“Relief sources say mobile medical centers and operating theatres are needed urgently, and that only international partners can supply them,” Morauta said last week.
Foreign aid pledges of about US$49 million have come in from Australia, China, the EU, Japan, New Zealand and the US, most of it provided by private companies, the UN said.
Exxon and its partner, Oil Search, said they have provided US$6 million in cash and kind for quake relief.
Local officials have said that the scale of destruction, with villages buried by landslides and provincial towns flattened, has overwhelmed authorities in the country, which straddles the geologically active Pacific Ring of Fire.
“Policemen are still struggling because there is no support flying in and out,” said Naring Bongi of the quake-damaged police station in the Southern Highlands capital of Mendi. “There is not enough food to supply care centers, they need fresh water.”
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