To prepare and tailor its response during the rainy season, the Logistics Sector team has organised a number of missions to field locations in Borno State over the past two months. These field missions are an important opportunity to assess the potential sites for the establishment of common storage services, and to meet with local stakeholders to discuss access and other issues.
The Logistics Sector common storage will be located on the Humanitarian Hub compound in Ngala. ©WFP/Katja Hildebrand
Most recently, on 15 June the Logistics Sector team visited the Humanitarian Hub in Ngala where, over the next weeks, four Mobile Storage Units (MSUs) will be set up, and a total of 1280 m2 of storage space will be made available for use by the humanitarian community.
Before this work could begin, it was necessary for the Logistics Sector to meet with local and national, civil and military authorities to ensure that use of the site was cleared and agreed; and, that the location was appropriate to support an inter-agency logistics facility. As road access to Ngala and surrounding areas is limited during the rainy season, there is potential for the storage site to see considerable use after becoming operational. During the course of the mission, different scenarios concerning the rainy season and access limitations were also discussed with local stakeholders, and some possible solutions were proposed.
The mission was organised jointly with the Emergency Telecommunications Sector (ETS) who went to Ngala to assess damage, following a severe storm the previous week, and account for the security telecommunications and Internet connectivity equipment which was deployed there in May. “The Sector response is crucial in order to efficiently coordinate the site preparation,” explains William Twyford, the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Specialist from ETS. “Joint missions like this one enable us to find out what the needs of the humanitarian responders on the ground are and how the sectors can address them in the best possible way.”
This has been the third Logistics Sector assessment mission to Ngala since January. The Logistics Sector went also to Gwoza, Mafa, Monguno, Pulka and Rann. The team will continue going on field missions in order to identify the solutions to the logistics bottlenecks in the field and serve the humanitarian community during the rainy season and beyond.