National disaster relief agency inoperable for years

Liberian officials say the government must reinstate its agency responsible for responding to natural disasters, which has been defunct since the height of the war.

“The National Disaster Relief Commission is inactive,” Arthur Tarlue, head of the commission told IRIN. “It exists in name only.”

Tarlue said that since 1990 when Liberia’s war intensified no resources have been allocated for the commission’s operations.

“We do not even have the skilled manpower to forewarn disaster or coordinate responses for disaster victims, much less a vehicle or a computer to do our reports.”

The absence of a functioning government relief agency came to the forefront again in recent weeks when floods and ocean waves destroyed homes and displaced hundreds of people in and around the capital, Monrovia.

The Liberian Red Cross Society was first on the scene after the floods. The head of the organisation told IRIN the government should take the lead, not outside agencies.

“The government is responsible to coordinate preparedness and responses to any disaster in the country,” Daniel Clarke told IRIN. “But with the present situation [in which the commission] lacks everything, this puts the country at risk when it comes to preparing for a disaster.”

He called for a policy defining how residents would be warned of natural disasters and how a network of trained disaster workers could channel aid to victims.

For now that kind of national framework is missing, according to Tarlue, head of the defunct commission. The agency’s terms of reference “need to be updated, because it was formulated in the late 1970s and now there is no real national disaster policy.”

In the absence of a national disaster response agency, the government has set up ad hoc teams for assessment missions in cases of floods and other disasters.

But the government is working to resuscitate the national commission, according to Information Minister Laurence Bropleh.

“We are aware of the dormancy of the disaster commission and in fact President Madam Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has embarked on consultations with local and international partners to activate the commission,” he said. “We need such a commission now in Liberia” to ensure that disaster response is effectively coordinated.

The Liberian daily newspaper The Analyst has called on the government to revamp the relief agency, saying in a 29 August editorial it is "needed now more than ever to give timely humanitarian and life-saving assistance to the people of Liberia."

Across West Africa, where populations endure floods and other natural disasters regularly, disaster management and preparedness must compete for already strained resources with deadly communicable diseases, struggling educational systems and weak infrastructure. In Liberia, where 14 years of civil war gutted government institutions, the challenge is all the greater.

ak/np