Oe-cusse, February 1, 2025 (Média Democracia) – The main program of the DIFANO group is economic and agricultural disaster preparedness, but so far it has focused more on disaster programs by conducting mitigation preparations with the community to see firsthand the disasters that occur in villages and rural areas.
According to the Executive Director of the DIFANO group, Jacinto Mala, DIFANO has created a program to collaborate with communities in 8 villages in the special area of Oecusse, Ambeno RAEOA to identify disasters that occur in rural areas.
“Our first preparation must be to identify and map the disaster problems that often occur in rural communities, especially in rural areas. Many of the problems that we have identified are flooding because people live in vulnerable areas such as on riverbanks and also strong winds, long summers and erosion.” Said the Executive Director
He continued, the DIFANO group could not work alone because the map of the villages and hamlets was so vast that they could not work alone to identify all areas where disasters always occurred in several areas.
“We must collaborate with partners, community leaders must form a commission, the Village Disaster Management Commission, so that they can collaborate with us to coordinate and communicate to which parts of the disasters that often occur in villages and hamlets,” he said.
He added that so far there has been cooperation with the RAEOA regional APC so that it can be responsible for place that DIFANO group which has been carrying out identification work in 8 villages.
“We also work with Oxfam Timor-Leste to be responsible for activities that will be carried out in villages related to disasters that always occur. We have identified disasters that occur in villages, first we must find the cause of the disaster that occurs that has an impact on people’s lives.” He said.
He also emphasized that identification of the capacity that occurs in the community in some parties lacks information and capacity on how to deal with flooding that occurs related to this, there must be cooperation with APC and CVTL to make small resettlement in areas where flooding occurs, this is a principle to focus on this problem.
“We are also looking for partners who can support us in terms of capacity building because we feel that currently the DIFANO group is also lacking in resources, therefore we have to liaise with the APC, the fire department and CVTL on how we can collaborate to provide resettlement for the flood problem.” He added.
He said the cause of the flood was heavy rain for more than three or four hours, generally in Oecusse there are many mountains that are overgrown with trees, then many people damage them and move their fields so that flooding occurs.
To further explained that starting to create a program in 2023 to 2024 because there are still many people who do not know what a disaster is, the DIFANO group conducted socialization, campaigns through media and posters, how to increase public knowledge about disasters in villages and hamlets so that they must collaborate with the Village Disaster Management Commission, APC, CVTL to provide training to the community about disasters that always occur and have an impact on people’s lives.
Reported by : Nelfiano
Picture by : Nelfiano