By Kebba AF Touray
The National Assembly Select Committee on Health, Women, Children, Disaster and Humanitarian Relief, has concluded its tour to victims of the recent windstorms.
The final touches of the visits took them to the communities of Sutukoba, Wuli East, Touba Sandu, Touba Wuli and Sutukonding in Wuli West.
Vctims said, “We express our profound gratitude to the Committee, National Disaster Management Agency, Red Cross for their effort in helping us remedy our deplorable conditions “.
They added: “This manifests their interest in our wellbeing. We still call for more such support as the incident has seriously affected our households”.
Sanna Dahaba, Director NDMA, told journalists that in cases of disaster, government is the principal duty bearer and as such this has compelled the government to swiftly extend assistance to the victims to relieve them of their conditions.
He emphasized, “No support is adequate, as such, there is a paradigm shift in terms of support and that instead of government providing response, it is focused on mitigation mechanism to reoccurrence of the incident”.
He continued, “Our next step is to share our findings with our partners, National Assembly and government, so as to mobilize more resources to fill in the response gaps to other victims”.
Sidia Jatta, informed the communities that the visit was to assess what support has been rendered to the affected communities.
He said, “This will enable the committee to know the victims who have so far not been supported and what can be done to provide assistance to them.”
Fatoumata K Jawara, Vice Chairperson of the committee, expressed grief over the disaster to the affected communities and assured that they will do their quota in ensuring that assistance is provided to the victims.
Ousman Sillah Chairman of the Committee said “we will make our recommendations to the government to ensure that funds are provided for the NDMA to provide more assistance to the victims”.
