As strong drrm partner: Naga families as first responders

By Jason B. Neola NAGA CITY --- Soon this city will be seeing families working dynamically with the Naga City Disaster and Risk Reduction Management Office/Council during calamities or emergency situations as first responders as the city government here continues to build disaster resilient communities. This, after the Sangguniang Panlungsod enacted Ordinance No. 2017-007which aims to empower families that would enable them to deal with calamities and other emergency situations by way of institutionalizing a community-level disaster preparedness program with focus on first responders and Basic Life Support trainings. Authored by City Councilor Joselito SA Del Rosario, the measure will serve as a facility to make families disaster-ready, thus making the communities, the city as a whole, to cope with natural or man-induced calamities. City Councilors Jose Rañola and Cecilia V. De Asis co-authored the ordinance. In his explanatory note, Del Rosario stressed that by increasing the level of preparedness and resiliency of families, which is the society’s most basic unit, could lessen the vulnerabilities they face when bad times occur could be lessened. “This ordinance would expand the number of individuals benefiting from the city government’s programs and projects which are focused on increasing the level of preparedness and resiliency of its institutions and citizenry,” says Del Rosario. The city government in close coordination with different national line agencies is pursuing the holding of strategies like disaster preparedness trainings for schools, businesses, establishments, and communities, which Del Rosario said in his explanatory note, could effectively be done through community-based trainings with families as leading participants. Donning the catchphrase “Pamilyang Nagueño, Preparado para sa Futuro,” the training program to be known as the Naga City Community First Responders and Basic Life Support Training Program carries the objective of providing each family in the city’s 27 barangays with knowledge and skills necessary in coping with natural and man-made calamities and emergencies. Invitation to support the implementation of the ordinance will be extended to national line agencies like the Department of Health, Office of the Civil Defense, Dept. of Social Welfare and Development, Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources, Dept. of Public Works and Highways, Philippine Army, Philippine Coast Guard, Philippine National Police, Bureau of Fire Protection, Bicol Medical Center and non-government organizations such as the Philippine Red Cross, the local media, and the Metro Naga Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The manifestation of support and commitment by the aforementioned agencies will be embodied in a memorandum of cooperation that will be signed in an appropriate occasion which will signal the start of the implementation of the program. The program, as the ordinance provides, shall be designed, developed, and implemented by Mayor John G. Bongat as chairperson and his co-chairperson who is the chair of the Sangguniang Panlungsod’s Committee on Peace and Order, Public Safety and Disaster Management with the chairpersons of SP Committee on Health and Nutrition, and Committee on Family and Women as members. Other members of the program organization are: Liga ng mga Barangay president, the 27 Punong Barangays, head of the City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (CDRRMO), the DRRM chair of the Sangguniang Barangays, the head of Least Economically Resilient Communities (LERCs) Program, the head of the Naga City People’s Council and selected partners from inter-agency Joint Operations Center (JOC). The program’s training committee includes the heads and/or representatives of the CDRRMO, the City Health Office, Naga City Hospital, and other institutions possessing the capability and willingness to participate in the trainings that are to be conducted.