The Ministry of Waterways is taking all measures to en­sure that communities are safe, including Labasa Town.

Minister Mahendra Reddy has confirmed during his meetings with the people in Vanua Levu last week that dredging work at the La­basa River mouth and Qawa River has been completed.

This means that the Labasa Town and surrounding communities would not need to worry about flooding.

“The dredging work finished about a month ago and now the team is working on navigational channel which will take a few months to complete,” Mr Reddy said.

“You must have seen during the last recent heavy rain that the town was safe, the water level in Qawa and Labasa River was maintained as there was clear flow of water. This is because lot of dredging and drainage work have been done in Labasa.”

He said an engineer has been post­ed to their office in Labasa to com­plement the team.

“To deal with this particular is­sue we are doing many things,” the minister said.

“We have established a separate team to clean the waterways cut off and remove debris.

We have a team with chainsaws and trucks to help clean drains and anything that disturbs the flow of water in waterways. We finished dredging Labasa and Qawa River about a month ago.

Now we are working on naviga­tional channel which will finish soon.”

In some places, he said drain­age works were completed, which would see an end to roads being covered with water should it rain heavily again.

Edited by Naisa Koroi

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