Afu said his organisation is focusing its efforts on coastal communities. Photo: Supplied
Coastal communities in Tonga are still living in highly vulnerable shelters and facing water and food shortages, two years after the tsunami following the Hunga Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai volcano eruption, an environment organisation says.
Live and Learn Tonga said more people are struggling and there was a need for assistance to be refocused to urban areas.
Country manager Alani Afu told RNZ Pacific that while the recovery efforts by government, private sector, and non-government organisations continue to meet the needs in rural areas, communities, like Patangata, Popua, and Sopu, have been neglected.
"You just hop out from the house to the water...most of these houses here, when it's high tide, the sea pretty much come and cover the WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) areas," he said.
"Whenever it's high tide, or whenever there's a storm, the damage there is always huge."
Afu said his organisation is focusing its efforts on coastal communities.
"We provide septic tank and maintenance of the WASH facilities. In terms of food security, we wanted to also provide that in [these] particular communities."
Families in Tonga continue to struggle
In the wake of the natural disasters, much of the country's water infrastructure has been damaged, and the need for community-level water assets is now urgent.
Afu and his team recently visited affected communities and witnessed many water pumps "no longer function".
"The water tank storage for the community is not enough to sustain or to provide water that particular community needs on a daily basis," he said.
"Some are very old, some are no longer operate, and the village Water Committee also need capacity-building on how to run the water operations in a sustainable way."
Photo: AFP PHOTO / NASA / NOAA
Call for help
Live and Learn Tonga is working with other local NGOs to form a partnership to provide more effective shelter rehabilitation.
"We wanted to form a committee that we can be able to work together with private sector and government in terms of seeing how we can best approach building a shelter that is resilient and can last long and withstand the natural disaster that's common here in Tonga," Afu said.
The NGO aims to faciliate its first collective meeting with partners in the shelter and infrastructure sector later this year.
Afu, while acknowledging the efforts underway at home, is calling for global partnerships.
"It would be nice to see more assistance coming in from wherever - donors, governments, and international organisations," he said.
Habitat for Humanity in New Zealand recently worked with carpentry students from the University of Tonga to build eight resilient shelters.
Group chief executive Alan Thorp said while that was a significant project, "there's no more houses in the pipeline for that project".
Thorp said the organisation has instead partnered with Live and Learn Tonga and the Talitha Project to continue shelter training.
"Habitat [for Humanity] will support the existing programmes of both the Talitha Project and Live and Learn Tonga to increase capacity with a focus on youth.
"It will implement shelter programmes such as Participatory Approach to Safe Shelter Awareness (PASSA) and Build Back Safer (BBS) training."
Both BBS and PASSA trainings are locally led and teach skills, including risk reduction, home maintenance, financial literacy, and community project management skills that are then put into practice with a grant-funded community project.