SYDNEY, April 10 (Xinhua) -- Papua New Guinea is hoping to draw on Australia's experience to improve its disaster response and management, after four deaths were confirmed from the latest quake that hit the southwestern Pacific nation over the weekend, local media reported.
"We need a better system to cope with future natural disasters," the ABC News channel on Tuesday quoted Papua New Guinea's Foreign Minister Rimbink Pato as saying.
"Clearly we are looking to the systems that are in use here in Australia ... They have a fantastic setup with the tool kit which requires them to take a unified approach, in the event of hailstorms or bushfires, or landslips, or floods, so the reaction to those kinds of disasters are immediate..." said Pato, who had attended a senior ministers forum in Australia's Queensland state capital Brisbane late last week.
Pato's comments came amid the latest reports of a 6.3-magnitude earthquake that shook Papua New Guinea last Saturday, killing at least four people, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The tremor was the latest major one to hit the country following a 7.5-magnitude quake in February that left more than 100 people dead in the Southern Highlands region.
Aftershocks and disrupted communications links have hampered vital relief supplies to isolated communities.