What good governance entails

For a country that is prone to typhoons and earthquakes, at the very least, sincere leaders should already have, long long ago, prepared a tried and tested disaster/calamity management system to minimize, if not eliminate the deaths, damage, and destruction that disasters and calamities bring.

Good governance should already have received reliable information and research about areas of the country prone to disasters and risks. Calamity funds should have been properly used for the various disaster/calamity management needs: Preparation, on-site assistance, rehabilitation and reconstruction, at the very least.

In the preparation stage, coordinated teams with properly trained personnel with functioning equipment and gadgets for communication, transport of people and rations, adequate supply of food, water, medicine, among others should have been readied. The coordinated teams should have been organized from the grassroots all the way up, not the other way around, for there are more to be saved in the communities than in the halls of power where the inutile bad leaders are holed up in comfortably, safely.

Each team should have trained staff and leaders who know how to apply emergency measures to various types of possible victims and survivors. Each team ideally should have the participation of medical staff to attend to health needs, the police or military to provide order and protection (especially vs looters), social workers preferably with guidance counseling background to reach out to those unable to cope with their grief and loss, with , of course , trained disaster personnel who know how to evacuate and save people affected by disasters and calamities.

The teams will not be effective if they have not been earlier trained individually and as a coordinated group for disaster/calamity management. The team would also have limited capability to be trained as well as to respond to actual risky, dangerous situations unless ample funds are provided for their training needs, salary, among others. Clearly, the calamity funds of this government should have been put to effective, honest use.

The recent calamities and the extent of damage to lives and people have clearly shown the bankruptcy in leadership who used up the publicly unaccounted calamity funds for other purposes other than for the intended purpose and beneficiaries among our people.

On the community level, rather than be used for personal or family purposes, the pork barrels and available funds of those in Congress and in the local government units should have been put to effective, protective use for checking/monitoring existing infrastructure for their durability and safety.

Schools and available sites for evacuation and temporary relief centers should have been identified early on. Even churches should have been asked to participate in disaster and calamity management trainings and actual operations.

More importantly, fund receipt, disbursement and supply to affected residents and communities should already have been systematized long long ago.

Sadly, as the recent outburst of Bohol Governor Aumentado clarified, even Malacañang has no effective system for fund receipt and management. So many agencies of government seem to be authorized to receive funds, the accounting of which remain as vague, as murky as the floods and mudflows brought in by the storms.

Which agency of government is authorized to receive and disburse disaster and calamity funds and donations? What system of accounting is now available that at a click of a button, anyone requesting for fund transparency can easily have access to the updated information about calamity funds.

Calamities and disasters are not our worse enemies in our country. Bad corrupt, selfish ineffective leaders have caused continuing grief and loss to our people and our land. To ensure a working, effective disaster/calamity management system, our people have to recognize the urgency to have good, selfless, effective leaders who will truly oversee and ensure the safety, protection and sustainability of the lives of people and our natural environment.

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