CONNER, Apayao – The local government units of Conner, Apayao and Mountain Province gear up for 2018 with various capacity-building activities for their stakeholders.
With the help of the Office of Civil Defense Cordillera (OCD-CAR), two technical skills training courses were conducted by said local governments.
Residents of Conner, had a 3-day Community-based Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (CBDRRM) training course on January 16-18, 2018. This helped the locals to be mindful of the country and local disaster situations, as well as the concepts of DRRM and to train them to anticipate, prepare and respond to the possibility of a disaster.
The CBDRRM Training utilizes various mechanisms on disaster risk reduction management, such as early warning systems, pertinent to the respective barangays, and practices that can contribute in disaster prevention and mitigation, disaster preparedness, disaster response and disaster rehabilitation.
Meanwhile, the Provincial DRRM Council of Mountain Province initiated a 5-day Position Courses on Incident Command System (ICS) on January 22-26, 2018 in Bontoc, a third level course on standard, on-scene, and all-hazard incident management concept introduced by the US Forest Service that can be used by all DRRM Councils, emergency management, and response agencies, a disaster response tool that coordinates the actions of all response groups.
“The National Gawad KALASAG is a corresponding responsibility to outdo what we have done last year. We must continue to improve and one way to do this is through training and educational enhancement.” remarked Mt Province Gov. Bonifacio Lacwasan Jr. in his opening message.
According to OCD-CAR Dir. Andrew Alex Uy, ICS has been proven effective in managing potential and actual disaster consequences. “In the past years, we trained local governments in the region on ICS and we already have an organized Regional Incident Management Team (RIMT).” Dir. Uy added.
Together with the OCD-CAR training team were resource speakers trained on different DRRM concepts and mechanisms with local DRRM officers from Baguio City, Kalinga, Ifugao, Apayao, and Mt Province were tapped to join the pool of instructors.
Other subject-matter experts who shared their knowledge and real-life experiences were officers from the Bureau of Fire Protection Cordillera, Tactical Operations Group 1 of the Philippine Air Force, and members of the Cordillera K9 SAR.
Aside from the provision of technical assistance to local governments and other stakeholders, OCD-CAR programmed around 20 training activities for this year, most of which are community-based DRRM courses and Community First Responders.
By Maruf Abdullah and Samantha Laron
