Bringing in community first responders into the formal disaster response system has been a core focus of the Fiji Council of Social Services as it works to co-ordinate the work of volunteers with government response teams.
FCOSS director Vani Catanasiga explained this was one objective of the workshop held in Ba yesterday for community workers and organisations in the Western Division dealing with disaster and humanitarian response.
“This is about raising awareness about the structures that exist at the sub and national level and making the connections to the humanitarian responders at the subnational level,” she said.
“This is to help them understand these are the systems with your government colleagues and how do you work together among yourselves.”
She said there were two policies CSOs needed to work under in order to work cohesively with government agencies in the aftermath of a natural disaster.
“There are two systems which include the National Disaster Act that was created in 1998.
“It has a more area-based approach and that gives the responsibility of humanitarian leadership and co-ordination to the divisional commissioners and they all respond to the disaster council at the national level.
“The second system is the Fiji Cluster System, which is a more recent framework of the humanitarian policy, which is more thematic and issues-based, that we are also doing.
“What we are trying to do is trying to connect the dots to say even though the discussions on the thematic are still very much on the national level, we are trying to make sure that their work are still effective.”
