Cagayan de Oro City—From zero budget for resiliency programs to the most resilient city of 2018, this city is making sure the experience of Typhoon “Sendong” that struck this city in 2011 will not happen again.
The city government started pouring in funds for resiliency only in 2013 when Mayor Oscar Moreno beat local political kingpin Vicente Emano.
Five years later, under the leadership of Moreno, Cagayan de Oro won the Most Resilient Highly Urbanized City award in the 2018 National Competitiveness Council Cities and Municipalities Competitive Index and placed fifth overall as most competitive city in the Philippines.
Moreno said winning the award “goes beyond the accolade and recognition but is a sign that the city is investing in its future.”
The index is an annual ranking of Philippine cities and municipalities developed by the NCC through regional competitive committees with the assistance of the United States Agency for International Development.
Last year, the city invested P756.5 million in disaster resiliency projects. The figure includes disaster risk reduction (DRR) and resiliency projects of the city hall’s different departments.
The City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office employs 152 staff, all capable of responding to any kind of disaster. CdO also invested heavily in equipment and mechanisms to support the frontlines, along with rain and river gauges to monitor the water upstream.
Moreno said that in 2017, the city invested more than 10 percent of its total P5-billion city budget.
“The law only requires 5% of the city budget to be allocated to resiliency,” Moreno said.
“Given that what happened with ‘Sendong,’ that Mindanao is no longer typhoon-free, resiliency means a lot us, and this is redemption for Cagayan de Oro,” Moreno said.
The rankings are based on the sum of their scores in four pillars: economic dynamism, government efficiency, infrastructure, and resiliency.
Quezon City once again is the country’s most competitive city followed by Manila, Pasay, Davao City, Cagayan de Oro and Makati.
After placing 22nd in 2017 in resiliency, the city made a huge turnaround, ranked no. 1 in the category this year.
“To be honest, I expected a better performance last year, unfortunately, somehow, there are data that got lost along the way,” Moreno said.
The mayor attributed CdO’s success in resiliency after the city invested in projects that resulted in zero casualties during the onslaught of Typhoon “Vinta” in December 2017.
Retired army colonel Mario Verner Monsanto, executive officer of the City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, said the city invested “time, patience and a lot of people development” that started from the barangay up to the city level.
“It is not easy to train people and to change the paradigm of the people, we have a lot of challenges that we saw,” Monsanto said.
“What we did in the first term (2013-2016) was that we created alliances with non government organizations and national agencies, and what we did first was our disaster prevention and mitigations plans; we addressed what we need to be done by the CDRRMO,” Monsanto said that on the second term, the city invested in equipments and people’s training.
The office ensures that the barangays are resilient so that the city will also be resilient,” he added.