Gov’t agencies lead disaster consciousness month celeb

By Aurora J. Casimpan

Thursday 5th of July 2012

TACLOBAN CITY, Leyte, July 5 (PIA) -- Government and non-government agencies joined hands to promote awareness and preparedness against the threat of disaster in kick off activities in observance of National Disaster Consciousness Month this July.

Led by the Regional Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (RDRRMC), the event carries the theme “Ligtas na Bayan, Maunlad na Pamayanan.”

East Visayas has been identified as prone to calamities among the regions in country with the provinces of Leyte, Southern Leyte, Northern Samar and Eastern Samar as high risk to flooding and landslide during the rainy season.

For this year’s celebration, member government agencies put the emphasis on the importance of the need to come up with plans to mitigate the effects of calamities.

The Department of the Interior and Local Government which is the RDRRMC’s assigned committee preparedness has called on the local government units for the awareness of the public on disaster preparedness at the local level.

Arnel Agabe, DILG assistant regional director said that local government units need to take on disaster risk reduction and management measures to prevent the huge effects of natural disasters.

The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) assigned as the committee on recovery and rehabilitations emphasized on the importance of disaster risk reduction and management as on issue as millions of pesos worth of properties are lost during calamities.

Bonifacio Uy, NEDA acting regional director said that occurrences of calamities are crucial to the attainment of the regional development goals. He stressed that the only way to avoid the effects of disaster is to deeper disaster awareness and practice disaster preparedness. (EOT/AJC-PIA8)