Pagasa, Phivolcs, DDR

Credit to Author: Tempo Desk| Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2019 16:15:30 +0000

 

echf ecf JOHNNY DAYANG echoes

RECENT separate reports from the World Meteorological Orga­nization (WMO), the UN Inter­national Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) and the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have all ranked the Philippines high among countries deemed vulnerable to climate change and the violent weather aberrations it spawns.

This gives Filipinos a chilling fear, given the widespread disas­ters caused by previous super-typhoons Umpong and Yolanda, and their current counterparts, as well as the recent strong earth­quakes that devastated several Mindanao areas.

Given the magnitude of dev­astation natural disasters bring about, Senate President Tito Sotto’s assurance that they will shortly enact the proposed De­partment of Disaster Resilience (DDR) bill now pending in their chamber sounds encouraging.

Significantly, as noted by Albay Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda, House Ways and Means Committee chair and principal author of the DDR measure, all previous disasters including the recent Mindanao tremors, have highlighted the ob­vious unpreparedness among both our state agencies with their “dysfunctional and discoordinated responses,” and the affected resi­dents themselves.

It has thus become even more compelling for the government to create the DDR as soon as pos­sible as the principal state agency that will focus on disaster risk assessment and warnings; disas­ter preparedness, reduction and mitigation; and disaster response including relief, recovery and reha­bilitation initiatives.

As envisioned by President Du­terte himself who has endorsed the agency’s creation in his pre­vious SONAs, the DDR must be guaranteed “unity of command’ and must employ an integrated “Whole-of-Government, Whole-of-Nation. Whole of Society” and “science-based” approaches to disasters.

As such, therefore, and for reasons of effectiveness and effi­ciency, the DDR needs to integrate under one roof various government units concerned with disasters, in­cluding the Office of Civil Defense (OCD) as its core organization; the Climate Change Commission Of­fice; the Geo-Hazard Assessment, Engineering, and Geology units of DENR’s Mines and Geosciences Bu­reau; the DOH’s
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