ZAMBOANGA CITY, June 20 (PIA) – Interior
and Local Government Secretary Jesse M. Robredo yesterday 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.
During a forum dubbed as “Tapatan on
Disaster Preparedness and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA)” held here yesterday
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.
“We all know that we may not be able to
prevent future occurrence of calamities and disasters. And being prepared is
still the best remedy for this. We have seen and heard in the media what
happened in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan cities last December. We should not take
for granted the importance of being disaster-ready to prevent loss of lives and
properties,” he added.
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.