BAGUIO CITY – A stable economy coupled with true public service will help in significantly improving disaster risk reduction, mitigation and preparedness towards the achievement of the overall goal of zero casualty, Deputy Administrator Christopher James Purisima of the office of Civil Defense (OCD) said here recently.
Purisima underscored the importance of lesser corruption in the bureaucracy to ensure that the money saved is used for the implementation of needed interventions for disaster risk reduction, preparedness, mitigation and climate change adaptation.
“We urge our disaster risk reduction officers to continue re-inventing their strategies to make their interventions responsive to the fast changing and evolving DRRM landscape,” Purisima stressed.
The OCD official pointed out one of the most important thematic areas that need to be improved is on rehabilitation wherein relevant government agencies in charge of rehabilitation and reconstruction must make sure that the projects to be implemented will be able to withstand future calamities that are stronger that those natural calamities that damaged the country’s infrastructure.
According to him, once rehabilitation projects are properly done, the government will be able to save substantial amount of money which could then be used for other equally important projects like education, other major infrastructure projects in agriculture, provision of livelihood projects, among others.
Purisima pointed out the agency is also in favour of creating the Civil Defense Authority as a full-pledged department to allow its officials and personnel to fully concentrate on disaster risk reduction, mitigation, preparedness and climate change adaptation efforts all over the archipelago towards making all the communities disaster-resilient.
However, he explained the inter-agency council under the proposed new set up of the OCD will remain to ensure smoother coordination among the concerned agencies for effective and efficient disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation efforts to ensure lives and properties are not exposed to extreme danger during the onslaught of natural calamities that visit the country.
While money is a major concern in the implementation of rehabilitation projects, he claimed the implementation of aggressive anti-corruption interventions that will make sure that the quality of projects will not be compromised so that they will last their prescribed economic life and to avoid other government agencies from doing repairs on the projects that will deprive other areas of similar rehabilitation projects.
He asserted the importance of further improving the awareness of the people on disaster risk reduction, mitigation, and preparedness to ensure proper actions will be done to spare lives and properties from being exposed to eminent danger thereby lessening fatalities and injuries when natural calamities and emergency situations occur in their respective places.
By HENT