Isabela Rep. Rodolfo Albano on Sunday urged President Rodrigo Duterte to create more military engineering brigades to help in disaster response and rescue operations and rehabilitation of damaged communities.
This he said after Typhoon “Ompong” battered Isabela and even Cagayan, adding military engineers were also tapped as first responders in disasters during the administration of the late President Ferdinand Marcos.
“There should be at least one military engineering brigade in every region that is fully equipped and ready for disaster response mission,” he said.
He called on the Department of National Defense and Armed Forces of the Philippines to modernize the military’s existing engineering units.
The DND and AFP must procure new road repair and construction equipment for the military’s corps of engineers, he said.
“I understand that many of their road repair and construction equipment are already old and not running. The AFP modernization program should include the procurement of new equipment for its engineering units. The military should be prepared not only for internal and external defense but for civil defense as well,” he added.
The military could ask its counterparts in the United States of America, Japan, Australia, and other allied countries to provide the Philippines with their excess or used engineering equipment, Albano said.
“In the aftermath of every typhoon that visited the country in the past, there was a problem with the distribution and delivery of life-saving food, water, and medicine to the worst-hit areas,” he said.
“We experienced such when super typhoon ‘Yolanda’ hit Eastern Visayas five years ago,” he said.
“But one factor that stood out among all these was the inability to quickly clear roads rendered impassable by debris from destroyed structures and uprooted trees,” he added.