"The Disaster Resilience Act is more about building the resilience of the entire community through all phases of natural disasters, from preparedness to recovery."
"The Disaster Resilience Act is more about building the resilience of the entire community through all phases of natural disasters, from preparedness to recovery."Only a fool would do the same thing over and over again, and expect a different result.
But that is how Senators Franklin Drilon, Panfilo Lacson and Richard Gordon would want Filipinos to do by withholding support for the passage of the bill creating the Department of Disaster Resilience, now languishing at the committee level at the Senate.
In contrast, the House of Representatives has already passed the bill on third reading, at least twice—but on both instances either rebuffed and ignored by the upper house.
This is despite the fact that since his first State of the Nation Address in 2016, President Rodrigo Roa Duterte himself has repeatedly made the appeal for Congress to approve the proposed Disaster Resilience Act.
Sen. Drilon has posed the strongest opposition, saying that the country has sufficient disaster management laws in place, and that move pushing for the creation of a full-time disaster management agency is but a “knee-jerk push.”
Drilon must be referring to Republic Act 10121, otherwise known as the Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (DRRM) Act enacted in 2010. The law, among others, provides for the creation of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), which is currently the country’s focal agency for disaster management.
It was the NDRRMC that was on top of things when typhoon Yolanda, the strongest in recorded human history ever to make landfall, struck parts of central Philippines in 2013, affecting massive numbers of persons and causing death, injuries, and damage to property. Hundreds of thousands more were displaced from their homes; even to this day, tens of thousands are reportedly dead or missing. Despite the amount of effort given to preparedness and the fact that key NDRRMC officials were on the ground to lead disaster response efforts, the typhoon caused an estimated total cost of damage of a staggering P22 billion.
Typhoon Yolanda proved that the existing solution of creating a body composed of multiple offices of the government primarily responsible for disaster preparedness and response simply did not work, but instead contributed to the inefficiencies in the bureaucratic process leading to bottlenecks and delays in the distribution of aid to typhoon survivors.
Sen. Drilon was quoted to quip, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But unless the good senator lived in another universe, he must know that the system did break down, not only during typhoon Yolanda, but more recently even in the last five typhoons that hit the country in the last three weeks.
If it were not to feign ignorance, then it must be, on his part, gross insensitivity to the gravest level.
On the other hand, Sen. Lacson questioned the practicability and feasibility of funding a full department. Estimates from the Department of Budget and Management show that around P1.5 billion is needed to jumpstart the DDR.
But compared to the cost of damage resulting from natural disasters or the trillions of pesos of government annual spending, P1.5 billion is but a drop in the bucket.
In fact, creating a single disaster agency could be our country’s best investment in strengthening our disaster management capability. The DDR could be in a better position to address the gaps in our disaster response capability. Thus, it could be more cost efficient in addressing the future calamities the Philippines is bound to experience in light of its geographical location.
Insisting that the DDR runs counter the administration’s policy of right-sizing the national government is plain callousness, as is if more evidence is still needed to prove that improving our disaster management know-how is crucial for a country located at the nexus of the planet’s typhoon belt and the Pacific Ring of Fire.
Disaster management expert Rep. Joey Salceda was right in saying that if funding is the problem, then Congress is duty-bound to source it out—but dismissing that the problem exists is but a careless option.
If the Senate could afford to allocate close to 10 billion pesos for the construction of a new Senate building, then appropriating 1.5 billion pesos to establish the DDR shouldn’t be as hard.
Lastly, Sen. Gordon thinks that resources should better to invest in improving already existing mechanisms of the government to respond to disasters, such as purchasing badly needed disaster response equipment, such as more rescue boats and C130 planes.
Gordon may be right in pointing out that we need to acquire more modern equipment, but he is wrong is thinking that the proposed Disaster Resilience Act is just a matter of creating another government office.
Say, for example, the national government procures more rescue boats and C130 planes —who will be responsible for its upkeep? Who will man the equipment? Who will decide on its deployment? How would it be any different from the currently disparate resources available to the NDRRMC?
What Sen. Gordon seems to miss out is far from just creating the DDR, more importantly, the bill ensures the continuous development and growth of disaster management programs, as well as building science-based expertise and best practices aimed towards improving the country’s institutional capacity for disaster resilience. In fact, the Disaster Resilience Act is more about building the resilience of the entire community through all phases of natural disasters, from preparedness to recovery.
Contrary to whatever the naysayers would propose, one thing is absolutely clear—the Philippines cannot continue to have a focal disaster organization that only has coordinative functions given the country’s high exposure to disaster risks.
As the principal authors of the DDR bill, Tingog Rep. Yedda Marie K. Romualdez and Rep. Martin Romualdez, pointed out, our personal experience during typhoon Haiyan has confirmed that the complexity of large-scale disasters undermines existing policies and structures. The current structure of NDRRMC where authority is shared, responsibility is dispersed and resources are scattered, renders it difficult to operate an appropriate and immediate response, thus delaying critical disaster response and recovery.
One thing is clear—the people cannot be taken for fools anymore. One doesn’t have to be an expert to know that the longer the Senate delays the passage of the DDR, the lives, safety and welfare of our people is put at stake —and for that, the blood of all who lost their lives will be on their hands.