Pursue disaster-free and resilient communities - Sec. Robredo

By Noemi B. Edaga

Tuesday 19th of June 2012

ZAMBOANGA CITY, June 19 (PIA) -- Interior and Local Government Secretary Jesse M. Robredo today urged governors, city and municipal mayors, including barangay officials in the Zamboanga Peninsula to formulate and adopt disaster and climate change adaptation action plans for a disaster-free resilient communities.

The DILG chief made the call after learning from collated DILG reports that there are 727 flood-prone and 587 landslide prone barangays out of the total 1,904 villages in the whole of Region 9.

The Zamboanga Peninsula is composed of three provinces = Zamboanga del Sur, Zamboanga del Norte and Zamboanga Sibugay, has five cities namely: Dipolog, Dapitan, Zamboanga, Isabela and Pagadian – and a total of 67 municipalities in the whole region.

During a forum dubbed “Tapatan on Disaster Preparedness and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA)” held here today at the Astoria Grand Hotel, Robredo said there is an urgent need for the local chief executives concerned – from governors down to the barangay level - to be disaster – ready for the benefit of their locality and their constituents.

“I heard that there are still a large number of LGUs in the Zamboanga Peninsula which are still non-compliant to our disaster preparedness and climate change adaptation campaign. Many of the Local Disaster Risk Reduction Management councils have yet to submit their respective action plan on both subjects,” the DILG chief said.

He added that while occurrence of calamities and disasters may not be prevented, yet being prepared is still the best remedy for such to prevent loss of lives and properties.

DILG Director for region 9 Paisal Abutazil explained that DILG’s Tapatan on Disaster Preparedness was aimed to assist the LGUs in formulating and concretizing their Local Disaster Risk Reduction Action Plans, assess their capabilities on disaster readiness and response and further encourage maximum participation on CSOs and volunteers towards complementation of resources to affectively address problems during calamities.

“The Tapatan activity is a good strategy to increase the level of awareness and not only of LCEs, but also their constituents and other stakeholders in mitigating disaster and the ill-effects of climate change. The DILG also apprised the local officials of their roles and responsibilities as prime movers in their respective localities in times of disaster (NBE-PIA9/DILG PR)