By Ali Macabalang
COTABATO CITY – The Bangsamoro autonomous government will be establishing field outfits on Rapid Emergency Action on Disaster Incidence (READI) to enable its component provinces and towns to deal with human-induced or natural calamities, according to organizing officials.
The autonomous region’s Ministry of Interior and Local Government (MILG) has outlined all enabling efforts to initially build provincial READI centers under its multi-project development roadmap for this year, lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo told the Manila Bulletin in an interview here on Monday.
Attached is a Manila Bulletin photo of one of the batches of Incident Command System (ICS) trainees in their three-day workshop in Davao City last December. Some of these graduates will man the proposed five READI outfits in BARMM (Ali Macabalang / MANILA BULLETIN)
Each provincial READI center will have a new building worth over P10-million, which will be equipped with complete modern facilities of global standards, said Sinarimbo, MILG minister and concurrent regional spokesman.
He said the field outfits will be built in the government centers of Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Maguindanao, and Lanao del Sur to ensure “close coordination at all times” with the host provincial officials and line agency representatives.
Most of the five provinces, which now comprise the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) alongside three cities and 118 municipalities, have been reeling from recent calamities; both human-induced resulting from violent extremism or local clannish feuds, and natural disasters like floods and earthquakes.
Loss of lives and wastages in resources resulting from disorganized and slow response efforts had prompted officials of the now defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) to create over a decade ago its Humanitarian Emergency Assistance and Response Team (HEART).
Shortly after the 29-year old ARMM was abolished last year, officials of the succeeding BARMM enhanced both the organizational structure and operations of the HEART, and renamed the team into READI.
Unlike in the ARMM days when HEART operations were placed under the Office of the Regional Governor (ORG), BARMM Chief Minister Ahod “Hadji Murad” Ebrahim had designated the MILG as caretaker of READI, taking into consideration the nature of the ministry as a “frontline” agency to local government units in the region.
Upon assuming the management supervision of READI late last year, Sinarimbo said, the MILG has been staging a series of trainings on Incident Command System (ICS), a global program developed in the United States and other advanced countries in dealing with all types of emergencies.
The MILG has tapped the services of renowned Filipino ICS “cadres” or trainers to capacitate not only READU staff but also volunteers from government and private sectors in all component provinces of BARMM, Sinarimbo said.
He named the ICS national “cadres” as Lita Enok, Doc Joseph Bacareza, Lito Lupo, Rose Cabrera, Irvin Paras, Eric Colmenares, Romelo Aguilar, Ranny Magno, Glenn Marfe and Assistant Secretary Mario Verner Monsanto.
Sinarimbo said 718 people, including executive and middle management officials, have already graduated in batches from ICS trainings, each spanning an average of four to seven days since September 2019 to date. The latest batch of 79 ICS trainees graduated last Feb. 25, he added.
Trainer Monsanto, a retired military colonel and facilitator of the now renowned 911 emergency operations in Davao City, has volunteered to help organize the provincial READI outfits across BARMM and a pilot “911 system” replica at the autonomous government’s compound in this city this year, the MILG chief said.
Graduates from provinces of the ICS trainings will be assigned to assist or man the proposed READI field outfits, he said.
The BARMM government wants to fully develop emergency response operations as part of its vision for “robust and moral governance” in the region, he added.
The national government has classified ARMM, now BARMM, as second “poorest region” in the country, a negative trait attributed to perceived governmental mismanagement and sporadic armed conflicts aggravated by threats from violent extremist groups.
“The autonomous region faces complex problems requiring comprehensive remedies,” Sinarimbo said, hinting at the development of preparedness against calamities as “vital component” of the remedial approaches.
“We believe in the adage that an ounce of preparedness and prevention is worth a ton of cure,” he pointed out.