(L-R) Philippine Information Agency Assistant Deputy Director-General, Assistant Secretary Ares Gutierrez and Office of Civil Defense Administrator, Undersecretary Ariel Nepomuceno.
QUEZON CITY (PIA) — The Philippine Information Agency will work closely with the Office of Civil Defense to make the country more resilient to disasters through more effective and efficient risk and crisis communications.
This came after a fruitful exploratory meeting was held on Tuesday, Oct. 8, between Undersecretary Ariel Nepomuceno, administrator of the OCD, and Assistant Secretary Ares Gutierrez, deputy director-general of the PIA.
The officials agreed to work together to review and improve the information sharing and dissemination processes of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council to ensure that accurate, consistent, and timely warning messages are communicated to the public in times of calamities and emergencies.
Also attending the meeting were OCD Assistant Secretary Rafaelito Alejandro and OCD Director Edgardo Posadas.
The PIA, an attached agency of the Presidential Communications Office, will mobilize its information officers spread throughout its 16 regional offices in this effort.
The PIA was likewise recently designated under the National Disaster Response Plan to be the lead agency in its Crisis Communications sub-cluster.
Undersecretary Nepomuceno likewise gave his assurance that the OCD will support the PIA in capacitating its manpower by including them in disaster risk reduction training and knowledge exchange programs to make them better disaster risk communicators.
Gutierrez, meanwhile, said the initiative perfectly fits with the directive of Communications Secretary Cesar Chavez for the state media to maximize government resources through interoperability. (PIA ODDG-RO)
