VIEWS
The Office of Civil Defense and Disaster Coordinating Councils are correct
all along in their prime thrust of giving all community’s stakeholders, the local government units foremost, a capacity in disaster-preparedness and in warning the latter to prepare for worst calamities and disasters that often strike in surprise and at unimaginable extent of human toll and property damage.
The helpless cry of the Iloilo governor for water, food and relief heard yesterday over ABS-CBN points out that in so far as the disaster preparedness of the government in the recent years is concerned we have not yet reached a point where government officials could immediately push the alarm button in their disaster preparedness plans for the rapid mobilization of stakeholders.
For umpteenth times, disaster coordinating councils often remind and stress the need for quick-response system to disasters given that the Philippines is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world for lying in the path of typhoons, storms and in the Asia’s ring of fire- the volcanoes- and not to mention for unabated illegal logging activities that continue destroy our forests and all the pollution around us.
In the case of Iloilo and even the towns facing the Romblon sea where the Sulficio’s Princess of the Stars sank, panic situation occurs now amidst the slow response of national authorities in the aftermath of typhoon Frank that did a Frankenstein in wrecking havoc to lives, properties, farms and the future of the thousands affected.
It’s good that we have seen President Arroyo flaring up while she and her junket of luxuriating officials are absent beyond the four seas, although she made a point anyway that wireless high-technology of teleconferencing could still make a visible presence to a country in distress.
There’s this latent tendency to be still reactive amidst calamity situation. This is observable in the way officials in flashflood-affected towns of Cotabato and Sarangani provinces slowly move to address calamity situation based on their disaster-preparedness plans. The crux of the matter is not the lack of money as that problem is the twin of disasters and calamities, as during times like these resources stand to be few while there are too many to be attended to.
The marching order for local government officials in affected towns is for them to flex their muscles up for the rapid operationalization of centralized disaster coordinating structure which will do the traffic for the collective and orchestrated relief and assistance to soften the impact of further toll and destruction.
Forget first talks of rehabilitation in worst calamities to which towns’ meager resources could not meet anyway besides the 5% percent corruption-prone calamity funds. Destroyed national projects and highways and gargantuan and sustained interventions are for the national government and international relief agencies, if ever there are, while grazed houses and grounds including sanity from agonies of deaths of loved ones are shouldered more by the affected people, who in due time would usually do a painstaking, painful Phoenix out from the rubrics and ashes of disasters and calamities. (Cha Monforte/Rural Urban News) http://ruralurbanews.blogspot.com
Filed under: region, davao city, disaster prepareness, region, typhoon
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