Mayor Herbert Bautista unveiled on Friday plans to engage members of the lesbian, gay, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community, persons with disabilities, and senior citizens in efforts to reduce disaster risks at the local level, including disaster preparedness and awareness raising activities.
This was to ensure Quezon City’s disaster risk reduction program would be made inclusive to all sectors of society, Bautista said.
“What the city will be doing is to equip even vulnerable members of society with knowledge and skills that will capacitate and empower them to become resilient in times of emergency situations,” he said.
“The involvement of the senior citizens and PWDs is very important because they are usually the ones being left at home. They should know how to protect themselves, especially at times of emergency or calamity,” the mayor added.
On Bautista’s orders, the city’s disaster risk reduction and management office shall formulate policies toward a training program that would strengthen the QC disaster response capability in emergencies.
Karl Michael Marasigan, DRRMO chief, said Quezon City would be the first local government unit in the National Capital Region to pilot-host the initiative.
It forms part of the new global framework for disaster risk reduction “providing for the empowerment and inclusiveness of people disproportionately affected by disasters” in policies and practices in disaster risk reduction and management.
“We should treat those as vulnerable but rather as capacitated and empowered,” he said.
To implement the initiative, the DRRMO will host a forum on the inclusiveness of PWDs, LGBTQ community, and senior citizens for disaster risk reduction to provide an opportunity for local authorities to move the city’s inclusive-sensitive disaster risk reduction agenda forward.
Invited to the forum are representatives from various national, local and civil society and people’s organizations; the Office of Civil Defense; National Council on Disability Affairs; Philippine Commission on Women; the University of the Philippines Center for Women and Gender Studies; Senior Citizen’s party-list; Center for Disaster Preparedness; Rainbow Rights; ProGay Philippines, and Philippine Foundation for the Rehabilitation of the Disabled.