BY MAVIS NISHIMURA PODOKOLO
QUARANTINE facilities at the Western Border is still very weak and is not yet fit to quarantine people, says the managing director of national disaster management (NDMO).
Loti Yates, in a recent talk back show on Coronavirus update at the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation (SIBC), said “Our challenge now is at the border, we have Police, Immigration officers, quarantine, biosecurity and customs Officers on border but I don’t think we have facilities for quarantining people there. Infrastructure there is still very weak.
“Our priority following institutional quarantine facility management team they went down to Western border and they are putting together recommendation for us to further approve the facilities at that area.
“We are working towards getting those things done and I hope to developed the quarantine facilities as soon as possible before we can start putting people under quarantine,” said Yates.
“There few facilities there but what about water, toilet facilities these are infrastructure that needs to go down because we cannot quarantine people in facilities with no water and toilets facilities.”
Meanwhile, Yates said far as quarantine facilities in provinces is concerned, for Western province, they are quite well off in their planning, they have identified their sites by putting on their resources to ensure provinces are not ready.
“As we know our provinces are very weak in terms of their resource capability. If we are to be useful with our response there, we have ensured that we have the infrastructure put in place to support them when we did this work,” he said.
