The National Government and its Partners met recently to workshop on lessons learned from last week’s lock down simulation.

The ‘Aelan Lokdaon’ code named ‘EXALD20’ was conducted from Wednesday 20th to Friday 22nd May.

Welcoming participants to the N-DOC spearheaded postmortem, Chairman of the Oversight Committee and Secretary to Cabinet, James Remobatu outlines, the objectives of the exercise is part of the Government’s overall preparedness and Response Plan against COVID 19.

The Oversight Committee Chair adds, the Lessons Learnt Workshop is also to evaluate;

  • Specific skills, tasks, knowledge and attitude within each of the sectors involved;
  • Emergency policies, plans, SOPs for specific sector and across different sectors (interoperability);
  • The operational readiness of different sectors to respond to reported COVID-19 cases in Solomon Islands;
  • Chain of command, roles and responsibilities within a sector and across different sectors as well as at different decision- making levels;
  • Public reaction to lockdown measures.

Mr. Remobatu says, the discussions covers what went well and did not go well during EXALD20, and area needing improvement.

"More importantly, is to discuss recommendations to enhance the state of preparedness of Government and its key institutions and stakeholders to manage the critical components of health, safety and security, and the socioeconomic impacts of a lockdown which will be implemented should a COVID-19 positive case is confirmed," he stressed.

He adds, the success of the exercise did not only show what was done right but also exposed the shortfalls and gaps in our plans, skill set, knowledge and State Of Standard Operation Procedures.

“We need to make drastic improvements within and across sectors if we are to enhance our state of preparedness and readiness to deal effectively and efficiently with positive COVID-19 cases in the country”, said Mr. Remobatu.

He acknowledges the N-DOC, Government Agencies, Public Officials, Stakeholders, Partners, the Exercise Control Team and the role players from National Red Cross Society for commitment and efforts to plan and execute the exercise.

The direct support by UNDP to host the Exercise Control Team at their office and the SINU for availing the School of Fisheries premises as the staging center for the role players have been generously acknowledged.

The Oversight Chair urge participants to be frank in their deliberations, failing which will not serve the purpose of the one-day workshop.

Source: Press Release