Sotto: Senate may OK bill creating Disaster Resilience department by December

MANILA, Philippines — The Senate is likely to pass proposed legislation to establish a department for disaster risk reduction and management, the chamber’s leader said Monday.

Senate President Vicente “Tito” Sotto III said on DZMM TeleRadyo that there is a "very big chance" that the upper house will approve proposals to create a Department of Disaster Resilience before Congress goes on Christmas break next month.

“Talagang kailangang kailangan. Malaki ang posibilidad [na mapasa] at malaki rin ang posibilidad na mapirmahan ng president ito,” Sotto said in an interview over DZMM.

(It is really needed. There is a huge possibility that the Senate will approve it and the president will sign it into law.)

He stressed the importance of having such agency following the series of powerful earthquakes that hit Mindanao last month.

“Sa tingin ko, dahil sa mga nangyayaring sunod na sunod na ito at alam mo namang disaster prone ang Pilipinas, mabibigyan na ng panahon kahit na dapat talakayin namin ang budget, malaki ang posibilidad na mapag-usapan ito,” Sotto said.

(I believe with the recent string of disasters and the fact that the country is disaster prone, the proposal will be tackled even though we have to discuss the budget.)

He added: “Ang national disaster, hindi nakakapaghintay.” (National disasters can’t wait).

The Philippines is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, an arc of intense seismic activity that stretches from Japan throughout Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

The country was also ranked third in the 2018 World Risk Index of most disaster-prone nations in the world.

Sotto is one of the senators who filed bills on the creation of the Department of Disaster Resilience. Others who filed similar proposals were Sens. Sonny Angara, Pia Cayetano, Bong Go, Francis Tolentino and Francis Pangilinan.

There are at least 22 bills at the House of Representatives seeking the creation of a Department of Disaster Resilience. All of them remain pending with the committee on government reorganization.

RELATED: Bills that Duterte asked Congress to pass in 4th SONA

Need for DDR

Republic Act 10121, passed in 2010, created the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, which is empowered with policy-making, coordination, integration, supervision, monitoring and evaluation functions.

Under the law, the NDRRMC shall be headed by the secretary of the Department of National Defense as chairperson with heads of Departments of the Interior and Local Government, Social Welfare and Development, Science and Technology and the National Economic and Development Authority as vice chairpersons.

Other Cabinet secretaries and heads of government agencies are also part of the national council.

In his bill’s explanatory noted, Sotto lamented since DRRM responsibility is shared among lead agencies, “nobody is in charge of the overall disaster resilience on a full-time, focused basis.”

He added that response to both human-induced and natural disasters are lumped under one body: the Office of Civil Defense.

“This bill seeks to create an empowered, highly-specialized and responsive Department of Disaster Resilience with clear unity of command,” Sotto said, adding the proposed agency will focus on geological, hydrological and meteorological phenomena and related hazards as well as climalotogical variability.

Another key feature of the bills is a clear system of responsibility for disaster preparedness and response—from the municipal or city mayo all the way up to the department secretary.

“This directly answers the oft-repeated question in times of disaster: who is in charge? This system of assigning levels of responsibility is aimed at ensuring unity of command and effective collaboration in the country's disaster resilience efforts,” Sotto said. 

During his fourth State of the Nation Address, President Rodrigo Duterte urged Congress to hasten the approval of a bill creating the disaster resilience department.