The Queenstown Lakes District Council is set to meet with community representatives on Friday as part of the regional response to last week’s Christchurch earthquake.

CEO Debra Lawson said a meeting had been arranged to discuss the effect of the event and gauge the impact of the large numbers of displaced people being welcomed into the community.

“We have invited representatives from a number of sectors including health, welfare and education to attend Friday’s meeting where we are hoping to get more of an idea of how the flow on from the earthquake is affecting the wider community,” Ms Lawson said.

The Council had also been trying to get a clearer picture of how many people have arrived in the district from Christchurch.

“Not everyone who has arrived here has required assistance with accommodation or welfare, so we don’t know exactly how many people have arrived, “she said. “This makes it difficult to assess the potential impact on local resources. We’re asking all displaced Cantabrians to register with the Council so we can obtain more precise figures and offer the right sort of support.”

The contact number for the Queenstown office is 03 441 0499, while the Wanaka office can be reached on 03 443 0024. Both numbers are manned 24 hours a day.

Official figures from the Ministry of Education show that as of the 2nd of March, the Queenstown Lakes District had one of the highest rates of new school enrolments in the whole country, second only to Timaru.

338 Canterbury pupils had been enrolled district wide. Wanaka Primary School, Mount Aspiring College and Arrowtown Primary School took the top three positions in the list of individual school enrolments with 106, 95 and 51 new pupils respectively.

The QLDC has received 589 offers of accommodation from residents and businesses.139 accommodation requests have been received.

ENDS

For more information, contact QLDC CEO Debra Lawson on 03 441 0499

 

By: Jo Blick