Creation of a disaster resilience department facing resistance in Congress — Duterte

MANILA, Philippines — Some members of Congress are resisting the creation of a separate department focused on the government’s disaster response, President Rodrigo Duterte said Sunday.

“We are having a resistance. Sa Congress mismo. May iba doble na daw, a duplication of work, tama na daw yang isa,” Durerte told reporters when asked if such a department would have avoided the damage wrought by Typhoon Ulysses.

[We are having a resistance. In Congress itself. Some are saying that it would just duplicate the function of other agencies. They said one agency is enough.]

While the bill creating the Department of Disaster Resilience (DDR) has already been approved in the House of Representatives last September, similar measures remain pending in the Senate.

Several senators raised the issue of bloating the already “bloated” bureaucracy with the creation of a new department.

Duterte has been pushing Congress to pass legislation creating for the DDR in his previous State of the Nation Addresses.

Nevertheless, he said he can work with the current set-up of the government’s disaster response in the meantime.

“Sa akin, okay lang [For me, it’s okay], I can do it in the meantime…What is important is that you have the machinery, and you have the equipment and you have the money, and people are there deployed before the typhoon comes,” the President said.

/MUF