The resident economist of the House of Representatives on Wednesday reiterated his call on his fellow legislators to pass the measure that creates the Department of Disaster Resilience (DDR) as a full-time, cabinet-level agency.
Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda of Albay, chairman of the House committee on ways and means, said the measure is atop his list of immediate legislative priorities for 2022.
Salceda said he hopes the Senate will pass the bill creating the Department of Disaster Resilience before the 18th Congress adjourns in June 2022.
“Odette bared the weaknesses of very local planning and mitigation. You really need a national agency permanently manning disaster response. It’s something of an insurance policy. We pool the risks among different regions, who are able to draw from national resources when some of them get struck by a calamity that is beyond their own means to address,” Salceda said.
“The presumption is, when a locality gets hit by something devastatingly large, even their own resources will probably have been affected. So, we need an agency that consistently facilitates the exchange of resources among localities and between the local and national levels,” he added.
“You need a National Emergency Management Agency, and the DDR will be this agency. As with the Department of OFWs, which I also principally authored and helped write as TWG chair, and which PRRD is set to finally sign into law just after Christmas, I am confident that we can make one last push for this measure,” Salceda said. “It’s atop my New Year’s wishes.”
Salceda, being the principal author of the measure creating a DDR, said “disaster risk reduction is both a human dignity and a socioeconomic development issue.”