Transcript
ALLAN BIRD: They're being taken care of. They've got enough food and things. The kids are going to school. I guess we're trying as much as possible to give them what you might call a normal life under the circumstances... at least as normal as possible.
JOHNNY BLADES: I guess they'll want to return (to Kadovar) but it could be some time before they can return?
AB: I don't think they'll return to the island because all the top soil has fallen off it. It's just a rock now. Even if they did want to go it would be very, very difficult for them to be able to put houses on, or train vegetables or coconuts, or anything like that, now that all the top soil has sort of slipped off it with all the volcanic activity.
JB: Is that something they accept, or are there people who would still insist about going back?
AB: Sadly, yeah they accept that. I've had to tell them. It's not a nice thing to say to people, particularly Melanesian people, and I guess Pacific Islanders in general, who are connected to the land. They're all connected to somewhere. Unfortunately, the Kadovar people are now just going to... if the island doesn't collapse, they're going to point to a rock in the middle of the ocean and say, well that's where I came from.
JB: What about the people on other couple of islands in that group? There were some suggestions that they would be moved as well.
AB: Yeah on one island, the biggest one, because they're living on an active volcano as well, they want to move. What we're trying to do is organise that properly. As soon as we have some space in between managing all these issues and once we're comfortable that Kadovar people are reasonably well established, then we can look at some other place to resettle the people of the bigger island, which is called Biem.
JB: The Kadovar people who are on the mainland (at Dandan just outside Wewak town), does the provincial government have to provide for them or is it the national government?
AB: Well we (the provincial government) have been looking after them so far. There's a new arrangement which is probably happening next week. The national government has nominated the Wewak district to take over from us. That's a lower level government, the district government to start taking over their care centre and so on and so forth. So probably from next week, that handover will take place because the funding is now directed to the Wewak district - that's the government funding - for the ongoing care centre and other issues surrounding those affected by the disaster.
