House OKs on 2nd reading bill creating Department of Disaster Resilience
MANILA, Philippines — The House of Representatives on Tuesday approved on second reading the bill creating the Department of Disaster Resilience (DDR), which was among President Rodrigo Duterte’s priority measures from his last State of the Nation Address (SONA).
Through voice voting, the lower chamber approved House Bill No. 5989 also known as the “Disaster Resilience Act.”
Under the bill, DDR will be the primary agency “responsible, accountable, and liable for leading, managing, and organizing national efforts to prevent and reduce disaster risks; prepare for and respond to disasters; and recover, rehabilitate and build forward better after the destruction.”
DDR shall likewise augment the capacity of local government units in collaboration with relevant national government agencies and other stakeholders to implement disaster risk reduction and management and climate change action plans, programs, projects, and activities.
The bill also provides that DDR will still have the Office of Civil Defense (OCD) as its core organization to which the Climate Change Commission Office, the Health Emergency Management Bureau of the Department of Health (DOH), the Disaster Response Assistance, and the Disaster Response Management Bureau of the Department of Social Welfare and Development will be integrated.
Albay Rep. Joey Salceda, one of the lead authors of the measure, said that DDR will help the country deal with disasters and emergencies “not as unfortunate incidents whose impacts are beyond our control, but as risks that can be mitigated.”
“We can no longer deny the fact that climate change is real, that we are a volcanically and tectonically active country, and that we face several typhoons each year. Disasters are a fact of Philippine life,” Salceda said.
“But we can mitigate the human and socioeconomic costs of these disasters. DDR will help ensure that we have a full-time agency in charge of keeping us strong and ready for disasters,” the lawmaker added.
Once implemented the DDR would be an institutionalized agency coordinating the national response to disasters and emergencies, replacing the ad-hoc and primary secretariat-type work of the current National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDDRMC), said Salceda.
In his SONA in July, Duterte called on Congress to pass DDR to ensure the safety of Filipinos during disasters.
READ: Duterte’s SONA: A mix of attack, warning, plea, wish list, promises
In the 17th Congress, the House passed on third and final reading a similar measure in October last year. However, the bill’s counterpart version failed to hurdle the Senate.
