The proposed Department of Disaster Resilience (DDR) bill, approved by the Lower House last September and now awaiting deliberations in the Senate, could effectively mitigate the “human and socio-economic costs” of disasters in the country once signed into law.
The House first passed the Department of Disaster Resilience Act in 2018 but the national and local elections during the year sidelined it while pending in the Senate.
Albay Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda, House Ways and Means Committee who principally crafted the bill, refiled it in the 18th Congress. The House passed it last September with an overwhelming 241 votes with seven votes against and one abstention.
Salceda said he believes the measure will have a strong support in the Senate this time, especially because Senator Christopher Go authored its Senate version where he introduced several innovations which were subsequently incorporated in the House version when it was refiled.
The Albay lawmaker lauded the innovations made by Go, pointing out the need for a “change in mindset and approach when dealing with natural disasters and calamities which regularly occur, and the hardships caused to the people are heightened in times of crises such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.”
President Rodrigo Duterte has repeatedly declared the DDR creation as a priority concern and an answer to the perennial woes brought about by disasters that have lately hit the country with greater strength and frequency.
HB 5989 seeks to create the DDR, a new department that will be the primary agency “responsible, accountable, and liable for leading, managing, and organizing national efforts to prevent and reduce disaster risks; prepare for and respond to disasters; and recover, rehabilitate and build forward better after the destruction.”
Following its House approval, Salceda and the bill’s co-authors have appealed to the Senate “to expedite the passage of the DDR measure that would institutionalize the cohesive, and comprehensive framework for disaster preparedness, prevention and mitigation, and response in our country.”
“We can no longer deny the fact that climate change is real, that we are a volcanically and tectonically active country, and that we face several typhoons each year. Disasters are a fact of Philippine life,” Salceda said.
“We can, however, mitigate the human and socioeconomic costs of these disasters. DDR will help ensure that we have a full-time agency in charge of keeping us strong and ready for disasters. Fortune favors the prepared. We cannot avoid typhoons and other calamities that come with our geography, but we can keep the risks low and the damage controlled. That is resilience: being able to achieve meaningful progress despite natural and external adversities,” he added.
HB 5989 assigns the Office of Civil Defense as DDR’s core component. Under it will be integrated the Climate Change Commission Office, the Health Emergency Management Bureau of the Department of Health (DOH), the Disaster Response Assistance, and the Disaster Response Management Bureau of the Department of Social Welfare and Development.