Watch: Tongan-born MP Jenny Salesa reduced to tears as she reveals sickening fear for Tongan parents trapped in Gita's path

February 13, 2018

The Labour Minister said she had a sleepless night worrying about the safety of her parents in Tonga as the cyclone hit.

Tongan-born Labour MP Jenny Salesa was this morning reduced to tears as she spoke of a sleepless night worrying about the safety of her parents from Cyclone Gita's onslaught.

The Minister for Building and Construction spent her early years living in Tonga, and is the first Tongan speaking MP to enter New Zealand Parliament.

"There wasn't very much sleep happening last night. I think for me the thing that was most worrying was just about family," Ms Salesa said at the Beehive in Wellington.

Ms Salesa's parents were in Tonga when Cyclone Gita hit overnight.

"There's a lot of damage to the house but most important for me is both my parents are alive," she said.

"My heart goes out to the people of Tonga, this is really personal to me.

"I was born and raised in Tonga so to see that devastation is really, really heartbreaking.

"There on the ground, it just seems there's a lot of devastation and a lot of damage, and I'm just hopeful not too many lives have been lost."

The Prime Minister said they have signed off on $750,000 of relief for Tonga after Cyclone Gita hit.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern also spoke at the Beehive on the unfolding relief effort for Tonga by New Zealand.

Ms Ardern said yesterday Minister for Foreign Affaird, Wintson Peters, signed off on a contingency fund of $750,000 to help the Tongan relief effort - if their government requested aid.

"We signed that off yesterday before we had any sense of the scale of what we might face. That was so there would be absolutely no hold-up for us to deploy emergency relief. We of course will keep monitoring what will be required."

The Prime Minister said the early reports and scenes of devastation made it very hard to know how long the recovery effort would take in Tonga.

"Mostly, I've jumped onto social media to follow those who I know who are there and just seen people who are surveying their own homes, and flooding," Ms Ardern said.

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