With the onslaught of El Niño, Leyte Rep. Yedda Marie Romualdez on Sunday renewed her appeal for the Senate to act on the proposed creation of the Department of Disaster Resilience when session would resume on May 20.
“I believe we still have time to work on the approval of the proposed DDR. I am appealing again to our good senators to consider fast tracking the passage of the bill as this 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,” she said.
Romualdez, Tingog Sinirangan party-list first nominee and House committee on accounts chairperson, is one of the principal sponsors of the bill.
She cited the importance to approve the measure before closing the 17th Congress in June.
Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Ray Villafuerte, another principal author of the DDR bill, also appealed for “the Senate to act with a similar sense of urgency in approving its version that will better equip government to deal with year-round natural calamities made worse by climate change.”
“The government can better achieve its zero-casualty goals as the would-be department could go full-blast on preemptive evacuation, especially of people in coastal and mountainous villages,” he said.
The Leyte lawmaker said the national and local governments should work double time and unite to mitigate the impact of El Niño and damages to the agriculture sector.