{"id":100,"date":"2018-07-29T15:23:07","date_gmt":"2018-07-29T07:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.globalphilippines.net\/irespond\/?p=100"},"modified":"2018-07-29T15:24:31","modified_gmt":"2018-07-29T07:24:31","slug":"philippine-government-pushes-the-creation-of-the-department-of-disaster-resilience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.globalphilippines.net\/irespond\/2018\/07\/29\/philippine-government-pushes-the-creation-of-the-department-of-disaster-resilience\/","title":{"rendered":"Philippine Government pushes the creation of the Department of Disaster Resilience"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
Congress will prioritize and expedite the passage of the pending bill that seeks to create the proposed Department of Disaster Resilience (DDR), and President Duterte \u00a0highlighted the importance of such agency in his State of the Nation Address last 23 July 2018. \u00a0The DDR will be a well-structured agency designed to manage a broad climate-disaster program of governance, as the country confronts more and more calamities of greater frequency and magnitude.<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Rep. Joey S. Salceda of the Second District of Albay, a noted economist and disaster-resilience advocate who authored the principal DDR bill (House Bill [HB] 6075), noted that, \u201cNow, more than ever, we feel the need to create a supergovernment agency, seeing the devastations around us every time disasters strike.\u201d He said the new agency will be \u201ctasked to carry out a continuous, consistent and fortified calamity-defense program and ensure the country\u2019s\u00a0sustainable development and inclusive growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Philippines marked the first day of 2018 with Typhoon Agaton storming Mindanao. A total of 22 calamitous weather disturbances, aside from man-made disasters, ravaged the country in 2017, claimed hundreds of lives, and damaged crops, properties and infrastructure worth billions of pesos. Typhoons Urduja and Vinta hit the Visayas and Mindanao in December 2017 in close succession with deadly results; flash floods and landslides, more than 200 casualties and thousands of evacuees and costly damages.<\/p>\n

Salceda said that, to face the onslaught of disasters, the country needs \u201cstrategic and systematic approaches to disaster prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and the effective programs on rehabilitation and recovery\u201d handled by an agency with its own mandate.\u00a0He heads the technical working group tasked to consolidate the 43 related legislative proposals on disaster response in the Lower House similar to his HB 6075. He added a really strong disaster agency is\u00a0 \u201cessential to a sensible economic blueprint and, since disastrous typhoons were noted to have been getting stronger and broader in impact in recent years, the creation of the DDR is an urgent agenda of Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n

The country\u2019s situation, he said, is critical since the Philippines ranks\u00a0third among 171 countries worldwide considered \u201cmost exposed and vulnerable to natural calamities,\u201d and is listed as 13th in the Climate Change Vulnerability Index. Almost 74 percent of the country\u2019s population and 80 percent of its land area have been identified as vulnerable to disasters, with Manila marked as \u201cin extreme risk,\u201d added Salceda, a multiawarded official in disaster-risk reduction and climate-change adaptation.<\/p>\n

With an initial budget of P10 billion, the agency will be accountable and responsible for overseeing, coordinating and implementing a comprehensive disaster risk and vulnerability reduction and management programs and redirecting policy drifts, among other agencies\u00a0handling such tasks.<\/p>\n

Salceda\u2019s proposed DDR aims to take in at least four government entities critical to an effective disaster planning and operation\u2014the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration and the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology under the Department of Science and Technology; the Geoscience\u00a0 Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources; and the Bureau of Fire Protection under the Department of the Interior and Local Government.<\/p>\n

He said the idea is akin to the United States Department of Homeland Security that has under its operational control major federal agencies to effectively confront security issues and threats in many areas.\u00a0Salceda added HB 6075 is a result of \u201caction research, sharing of experiences and dynamic discussions among various stakeholders from national and local government agencies, organizations and communities, and is a product of comparable international experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill also seeks to amend the eight-year-old Republic Act 10121, which created the National Disaster Risk and Reduction Framework, a landmark legislation but which\u00a0falls short in creating \u201can institution that is sufficiently in a high position to oversee the implementation of streamlined disaster-risk reduction and management policies nationwide. It will have the necessary authority, mandate and resources to lead and coordinate efforts of various stakeholders toward a more resilient nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the concept, the DDR will be separate from the Office of Civil Defense, which will continue to perform its original mandate, particularly its duty to administer a comprehensive national civil defense and civil assistance program, training of community volunteers for civil defense and assistance and other mechanisms for community preparedness.<\/p>\n

Recently, the House committees on government reorganization and defense approved a bill creating a Department of Disaster Resilience.<\/p>\n

\"irespond\"
Individual and Community Responses to Disasters.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congress will prioritize and expedite the passage of the pending bill that seeks to create […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[100,99,5,3,103,102,101,104],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-irespond-news-update","tag-ddr","tag-department-of-disaster-resilience","tag-individual-and-community-responses-to-disasters","tag-irespond","tag-ndrrm","tag-office-of-civil-defense","tag-philippines-to-create-ddr","tag-ra-10121"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalphilippines.net\/irespond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalphilippines.net\/irespond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalphilippines.net\/irespond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalphilippines.net\/irespond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalphilippines.net\/irespond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalphilippines.net\/irespond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalphilippines.net\/irespond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/103"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalphilippines.net\/irespond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalphilippines.net\/irespond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalphilippines.net\/irespond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalphilippines.net\/irespond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}