Two committees in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, Feb. 22, began deliberations on the proposed creation of a Department of Disaster Resilience (DDR), which will lead the management of disasters and improve the country’s institutional capacity for disaster risk reduction.
The 19th Congress will use the substitute bill approved during the 18th Congress as its working draft bill since it already contains 27 of the 31 bills filed for the same purpose.
During Wednesday’s deliberation by a joint panel of the House Committee on Government Reorganization and the Committee on Disaster Resilience, a technical working group (TWG) was created chaired by Albay 2nd District Rep. Joey Salceda for government reorganization and Malasakit at Bayanihan Party-list Rep. Anthony Golez Jr. for disaster resilience.
“The annual cost of natural disasters to the Philippine economy is historically anywhere between 2.5 percent to five percent of GDP. This is probably the largest causes of our growth overhang, or the difference between our potential annual GDP growth rate, and the actual growth rate we achieve,” Salceda said in his sponsorship speech of his House Bill (HB) No. 48, which forms part of the working draft bill.
“In other words, disasters are not merely a peripheral concern for government. Disasters are a feature of Filipino economic and social life. Nowhere is that more evident than in my home province of Albay. So, to the critics who say that disaster resilience does not deserve its own agency, I ask what else does?,” he added.
Salceda recognized that the working draft bill may deviate from the hopes of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. to establish something similar to the United States’ Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which falls under the Department of Homeland Security to prepare for, prevent, and mitigate the effects of natural and man-made domestic disasters.
However, he suggested for the Presidential Legislative Liaison Office “to (conduct a) workshop (that will produce) an executive version.”
“We can either allow them to use our draft substitute bill as their starting point, or we can allow them to work on the executive version first which they can endorse to us. Either will take some more time for the committee to pass the bill, but it will help ensure that our efforts do not go to waste,” Salceda said.
Aside from creating DDR, HB 48 seeks to give powers to the agency to recommend to the President the declaration of a state of calamity and grants the President the powers to impose administrative sanctions against local chief executives and barangay officials for "willful or negligent acts.”
It would also establish the National Disaster Operations Center, Alternative Command Centers, and the Disaster Resilience Research and Training Institute.
HB 13 by House Speaker Martin Romualdez and Tingog Party-list Reps. Yedda Marie Romualdez and Jude Acidre is also part of the substitute bill.
“A new Department of Disaster Resilience will effectively improve the institutional capacity of the government for disaster risk reduction and management, reduce the vulnerabilities surrounding the affected local population as well as build the resilience of local communities to both natural disasters and climate change,” the bill’s explanatory note said.
“Given its exposure to disaster risk, the Philippines cannot continue to have a focal disaster organization that only has coordinative functions,” it added.
Meanwhile, Department of Science and Technology (DOST) Secretary Renato Solidum Jr. backed the “versions” of the bills wherein the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) and Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) “are not among its attached agencies.”
Currently, both agencies are under the DOST.
“Phivolcs and PAGASA deliver their functions with highly technical and science and technology based in nature. They perform research and development, technical services and awareness raising information dissemination based on scientific evidences. Those activities are all in the realm of science and technology,” he said.
Solidum stressed that the DRR would need “good managers who can anticipate and manage crisis brought about by various natural hazards and disaster related to weather climate and geophysical events.”