DEFENSE Secretary and National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (NDRRM) chairman Delfin Lorenzana is seeking an amendment of the NDRRM law to improve the government's response to calamities.
"Based on my experience, calamities come regularly every year so we need an agency which can focus on this 24 hours," said Lorenzana who presided a meeting of the council Thursday in Camp Aguinaldo.
Lorenzana said government's calamity response is under the Defense department, through the Office of Civil Defense. The OCD, an attached agency of the DND, is the operating arm of the NDRRMC. The NDRRMC is composed of various government agencies.
"At present, it’s under the Defense, I am the chairman. And we have also OCD working 24 hours but they (OCD officials) are under me so they still have to consult with me," said Lorenzana.
Lorenzana said he has other missions to accomplish, including the administration of the Armed Forces which is in charge of fighting various threats to national security.
"The problem here is I have other jobs like managing our operations against the enemies of the state, which is also 24 hours (job). At times, I couldn't focus on it (disaster response)," said Lorenzana.
"So we'd like to elevate the OCD into a department level to give it more teeth to implement policies to mitigate disaster, or prepare and mitigate disasters...That's the reason why we want it elevated to a department level," said Lorenzana.
It was not immediately clear if the proposed amendment of Republic Act 10121 will mean that the defense secretary will cease to be the NDRRMC chairman.
NDRRMC spokesperson Romina Marasigan said the proposed amendment is a product of consultations since last year. She said the NDRRMC is championing the amendment through some legislators. (VR/SunStar Philippines)