Tongans queued for limited money services that were yesterday restored in the Pacific island’s capital, as the cleanup continued a week after a devastating volcanic eruption and tsunami.
Tonga’s government said drinking water was the priority, and a national emergency team had already distributed 60,000 liters of water to residents.
A desalination plant on a New Zealand naval ship that arrived on Friday, capable of producing 70,000 liters a day, has started drawing seawater from Tonga’s harbor.
Residents who had lost homes on outlying islands when a tsunami reaching up to 15m crashed over the South Pacific archipelago would be relocated to the main island, Tongatapu, because of water and food shortages, the Tongan prime minister’s office said in a statement distributed to Tongan officials.
Volcanic fallout on the surface of the ocean was damaging boats and making marine transport between the islands challenging, and domestic flights were suspended, it said.
Ash fall and the tsunami had affected 84 percent of the population, and inter-island communications remained an “acute challenge” with limited satellite and radio links, it said.
Burials were held earlier in the week for a Tongan man and a woman who had died when the tsunami hit the outlying Ha’apai islands. The official death toll is three.
A field hospital has been set up on Nomuka Island after the health center there was swept away.
Faka’iloatonga Taumoefolau, the coordinator for the project to rebuild Tonga’s parliament, said the restoration of international money transfer services, for limited hours yesterday, was important for people to be able to buy essential goods.
“Tongans have demonstrated their resilience in this calamity and will get back on their feet,” he said, speaking from Tongatapu.
More naval vessels from Australia, New Zealand and the UK were en route to Tonga to deliver aid. Two aid flights, from Japan and New Zealand, yesterday arrived with humanitarian supplies, after two flights from Australia on Friday evening.
The Tongan government has implemented a strict COVID-19 policy that means people, including aid workers, cannot enter the nation unless they have undergone a three-week isolation period. Aid deliveries have been contactless, with pallets quarantined for 72 hours after arrival at the airport before being distributed by Tongan authorities.
One Australian aircraft returned to Brisbane mid-flight on Thursday after being notified of a COVID-19 case among the crew.
An aid delivery expected from China would also be contactless to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the government said.
Taumoefolau said that Tonga had done a good job in avoiding a COVID-19 outbreak, recording only one case so far, and the border policy would not hinder aid reaching communities.
“It is doable to get the aid in without compromising efforts on keeping COVID out,” he said.
An Australian navy vessel, the HMAS Adelaide, is expected to arrive in Tonga on Wednesday with more bulk water and a 40-bed field hospital, Australian Minister for International Development and the Pacific Zed Seselja told reporters in Canberra.
The Tongan government was doing “an extraordinary job on the ground,” he said.
Australia and New Zealand were coordinating an international aid effort with support from Fiji, France, Papua New Guinea, the UK and the US, he said, adding that the Tongan government had asked for support to be paced so the small airport was not overwhelmed.
Asked by reporters about China’s aid program in the Pacific, Seselja said: “We welcome offers of support from anyone, including the Chinese government.”
Sione Hufanga, the resident UN country coordination specialist, said that the agency is assisting the government with relief work as more people arrive at shelters and seek food and other supplies.
“Almost all crops in the country have been badly affected. Farmers have lost their homes and livelihood,” he said by telephone from Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa. “The country will be heavily relying on aid food for some time.”
The agricultural sector contributed nearly 14 percent of Tonga’s GDP in 2015-2016 and represented more than 65 percent of exports.
The Tongan government said it is “deeply appreciative to the international community” for its assistance, which included US$8 million in funding from the World Bank and US$10 million from the Asia Development Bank.
Reliance, a repair ship due to reconnect the undersea cable that links Tonga to international telecoms networks, left its Port Moresby mooring and was expected in Tonga on Jan. 30, Refinitiv shipping movement data showed.
The vessel was expected to arrive “in the next few days” to repair the fiber-optic cable, the Tongan government said.
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