(Eagle News) – President Rodrigo Duterte urged Congress to pass a law that will create a new department that will handle disaster risk reduction, the Department of Disaster Management.
The President said his cabinet has “approved for immediate endorsement to Congress the passage of the law creating the Department of Disaster Management.”
“We need a truly empowered department characterized by a unity of command, science-based approach, and full time focus on natural hazards and disasters, and the wherewithal to take charge of the disaster risk reduction, preparedness response for better recovery and faster rehabilitation,” the President said in his SONA speech on Monday, July 23.
The President likened the new department to the United States FEMA or the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
“I fervently appeal to congress to pass this bill with utmost urgency. Our people’s safety requirements cannot wait,” he said.
Duterte said that this bill for the creation of the Department of Disaster Management (DDM) is a “high-priority measure aimed at genuinely strengthening our country’s capacity for (resilience) to natural disasters.”
He said that this department is needed to “reduce our vulnerabilities to natural hazards, and bolster our resilience to the impact of natural disasters and climate change.”
“To help safeguard the present and the future generations, we have to earnestly undertake initiatives to reduce our vulnerabilities to natural hazards, and bolster our resilience to the impact of natural disasters and climate change,” the President said.
He said that the country should also learn from the people’s experience with “super-typhoon Yolanda and other mega-disasters, and from global best practices.”
The Philippines is hit by an average of 20 tropical cyclones a year, ten of which turn to be typhoons.
The country is also described as the “most exposed country in the world to tropical storms” according to a Time Magazine article in 2013.
The country also sits along the Pacific Ring of Fire – a large Pacific Ocean region where many of Earth’s volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur. (Eagle News Service)
