EDITORIAL - Do we really need a new department?

The head of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) is supporting calls to create another department to manage disasters.

According to Ricardo Jalad, executive director of the NDRRMC, the proposed Department of Disaster Resilience can be harnessed to address the issues between national agencies during times of calamities and disasters.

“The Department of Resilience is more powerful and has more advantage. It will be ranked among the departments it will mobilize. In other words, a Cabinet secretary will order other Cabinet secretaries,” Jalad said.

Despite that, Jalad says the NDRRMC should also not be abolished.

The Department of Disaster Resilience was actually the proposal of Senator Christopher “Bong” Go. It was last year when Go proposed to set up a new department to manage disasters in the Philippines.

Specifically, Go proposed that the new department will focus on three functions; disaster risk reduction, disaster preparedness and response, and recovery from disaster.

The goal Jalad has in mind is laudable. Considering how many times we are visited by calamities every year, and considering our vulnerability to climate change, it is actually a good idea to improve the coordination between agencies when it comes to rescue and relief efforts.

However, one issue here is that creating another department means allocating money for it. If you want a Cabinet official to handle something, he or she has to be paid, as well as the people under that official, and the people under those people.

We can also expect each region to have local offices of that department, which entails even more costs.

And right now our budget is being stretched because of the unexpected expenses brought on by the pandemic. You might have also heard or read about officials arguing about the allotments for some departments in next year’s budget. Then there are those departments that cannot carry out their assigned functions anymore due to lack of funds.

A new department is also another addition to what our lawmakers call a “bloated bureaucracy”. We already have too many departments, some with overlapping functions. In many cases this actually creates confusion and more red tape.

The functions of the proposed new department --disaster risk reduction, disaster preparedness and response, and recovery from disaster-- are actually already being performed by, or can be assigned to, existing agencies and local government units. For now, there is really no need to create another body for this purpose.