15th April, 2016 The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of MEIDECC Hon. Siaosi Sovaleni signed a memorandum of understanding with the CEO of Habitat for Humanity New Zealand Claire Szabó this morning at MEIDECC’s conference room.
Ms Szabó said the agreement aimed to better the welfare of Tongan families through the charity’s shelter projects.
“Today marks the first tip of our new partnership and the signing of this agreement with the purpose to improve the safety, resilience and well-being of Tongan families through shelter projects after the disasters happened and also before they occur,” she said.
“The first term of the agreement is for five years and we hope that we will renew it.”
She said the charity would first determine its budget to understand the cost of buildings in Tonga and then made the announcement about the number of houses they would be constructing.
“First we are going to determine our budgets and then we’re going to see our fundraising go. We will be fundraising in New Zealand with our donors and supporters to try and help this project get off the ground.”
“We fundraise for materials but we also have a network of skills volunteers and they can help supervise the buildings and make sure it’s in good standards and also provide labours for the building and project management.”
According to Ms Szabó it was one of the charity’s ambitions to bring their assistance to Tonga after working through the Pacific since 2009.
“We had a dream to bring our services one day to the Kingdom of Tonga. We got the right idea when we told Jenny Salesa about this journey and she has arranged for us to have a meeting with a man of great action here and that is the Deputy Prime Minister.”
“Today we made this commitment to each other to commemorate together, to build a world where everyone has a decent place to live.”
Hon. Siaosi Sovaleni said the agreement co-ordinated with the government’s strategies in their endeavour to reduce poverty in Tonga.
“From the government perspective, this is very much in-line with what we want to do, to focus our efforts and some of our resources to help those who needs help,” he said.
“It’s a welcoming initiative and we’re very happy and this is the beginning of the first step in actioning this initiative where we will be looking at the financing, resourcing, partnership so that hopefully we can end up helping those that we intend to.”
ENDS
Issued from the Ministry of Meteorology, Energy, Information, Disaster Management, Environment, Climate Change and Communications
