Commissioner West Office On Standby To Assist Municipal Councils

The Divisional Commissioner Western Office stands ready to assist municipal councils in the western division should they need assistance in cleaning up.

Commissioner West, Mesake Ledua said all requests for assistance from municipal councils were channeled from his office to the Divisional Fire officers. However, the district office was constantly on standby to work with the municipal council once the towns were dry and free of flood waters.

“One of the challenges now is as soon as the water level goes down and it’s almost dry, the next couple of hours the water rises again,” he said.

“In Ba, they were just about to start cleaning when there was heavy rain again and the water level rose. But from today I think most of Ba and Tavua are drying up so certainly team fire is there to assist on the ground.”

As of February 10, there were 15 activated evacuation centres with up to 627 evacuees throughout the Western Division, however, Mr Ledua said, the situation on the ground was being closely monitored and his teams would be providing assistance as and when required

National Fire Authority chief executive officer, Puamau Sowane said, so far no requests had been made by municipal councils.

“There was only one request from the Commissioner Western for the cleaning up of a school in the Western Division,” he said.

“NFA is always there to assist the members of the public and also the Town councils in terms of cleaning up, it is a natural disaster that no one can control. Usually the commissioners are the ones looking after all that and the commissioner will liaise directly with us and then from there we will deploy our people.”

Meanwhile, Ba Town Council workers were spotted conducting maintenance works for the town amenities and cleaning the bus stand area yesterday.

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