Two House leaders are pushing for the creation of a government agency that would specifically deal with disasters and other calamities in the country.
Reps. Lord Allan Velasco of Marinduque and Yedda Marie Romualdez of Tingog Sinirangan Party-list group stressed the need for Congress to enact the proposed Department of Disaster Resilience as the country has been experiencing earthquakes and aftershocks recently.
Last Friday, a 5.3-magnitude jolt hit offshore near sparsely populated Polillo Island, Quezon Province about 120 kilometers from Manila, according to the US Geological Survey.
Velasco, author of House Bill 3459 or the proposed Department of Disaster Resilience, said there was a need for a coherent government response to disasters under a new agency that would be called the Department of Disaster Resilience.
Velasco cited studies by the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology that among the areas that have a higher risk of intensity-8 earthquakes are the National Capital Region, Bulacan, Rizal, and Cavite.
Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Quezon, Laguna, and Batangas are located in the low intensity-8 areas under the seismic map, Velasco added, citing the Phivolcs studies.
“Given the risks poised by these looming disasters, I am appealing to my fellow legislators to consider fast-tracking the passage of the DDR bill,” said Velasco, who is expected to take over the post of speaker in over a year from now.
Per Philvocs, Velasco said the Philippines was among the top countries in the world with a higher risk of disasters. The others are Bangladesh, Guatemala, and Brunei.
Velasco also noted that the country was host to 300 volcanoes of which 24 are active.
He said 20 earthquakes were recorded by Phivolcs every day including some 90 destructive earthquakes and 40 tsunamis in the past 400 years.
Velasco said the “new normal of the 21st Century” was more intense typhoons and increased disaster risks.
For her part, Romualdez, author of HB1151, said the DDR would guarantee a unity of command, a science-based approach and a full-time focus on natural hazards and disasters.
Romualdez was one of the principal sponsors of the DDR measure the House of Representatives’ 17th Congress approved on third and final reading last year. She is the chairperson of the House Committee on the Welfare of Children.
She added said the DDR bill would help drastically reduce, if not totally eliminate, the bureaucratic red tape that has caused many delays in the delivery of immediate assistance needed by disaster and calamity victims.
Under the bill, the department shall be headed by a secretary, with four undersecretaries, assistant secretaries and directors who are “preferably specialists in the field of disaster risk reduction and management, science and technology, environmental science and management, urban planning, civil engineering, public finance, information and communications technology, logistics management, mass communication and other fields relevant to disaster resilience.
The department shall also establish regional, provincial, city, municipal and barangay disaster resilience offices following the abolition of the Local Disaster Risk Reduction Management Offices.
“This bill applies the painful lessons from the country’s major disasters like Typhoon Yolanda and global best practices,” said Velasco, chairman of the House Committee on Energy.