House OKs on third and final reading bill creating Department of Disaster Resilience

The House of Representatives on Tuesday approved on third and final reading the measure creating the Department of Disaster Resilience (DDR), one of the priority legislation of President Rodrigo Duterte.

With a vote of 241 in the affirmative, seven in the negative, and zero abstentions, the chamber approved House Bill 5989, creating the DDR as the country's national emergency department.

The measure mandates the DDR to be the primary government agency responsible for "leading, organizing, and managing the national effort to reduce disaster risk, prepare for and respond to disasters, recover and rehabilitate, and build forward better after the occurrence of disasters."

Under the measure, the DDR may undertake and implement emergency measures in anticipation of, during, and after disasters in order to protect and preserve life and property as well as to ensure and promote public safety and welfare.

These emergency measures include the carrying out of preemptive and forced evacuation, imposition of curfew, and temporary takeover of any private utility or business subject to payment of just compensation when there is possible loss of lives or damage to property.

The measure also seeks to establish the National Disaster Operations Center (NDOC), Alternative Command Centers (ACC), and Disaster Resilience Research and Training Institute (DRRTI).

The NDOC, as stated in the measure, is a physical center that will monitor, manage, and respond to disasters in all areas of the country, while the ACCs are command centers tasked to provide supplemental support to the NDOC.

The DRRTI, on the other hand, is a platform for providing training preferably on site, and for collecting, consolidating, managing, analyzing, and sharing knowledge and information to enhance the country's resilience against disasters.

Local DRRM Offices in provinces, cities, and municipalities are retained under the bill, renaming them as Provincial, City, and Municipality Disaster Resilience Offices, respectively.

Further, the measure renames the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Fund, created under RA 10121, as the National Disaster Resilience Fund to be managed and controlled by the DDR.

The bill also gives the DDR the power to recommend to the President the declaration of a state of calamity, whether the whole area or only part of parts of it, if ever there is an extraordinary disaster with serious and far-reaching repercussions on public safety and welfare.

At the same time, it gives the President the authority to impose administrative sanctions against local chief executives and barangay officials over willful and negligent acts performed in the implementation of the proposed law.

Special courts on disaster resilience matters are likewise created under the measure.

In his fifth State of the Nation Address last July, President Rodrigo Duterte emphasized the need for the creation of the DDR to ensure public safety during disasters.

The House of Representatives in the 17th Congress also approved the DDR bill on third and final reading, but it did not get the same approval in the Senate. —AOL, GMA News