BAGUIO CITY – The Office of Civil Defense – Cordillera regional office continues to intensify disaster risk reduction management capacity building for local government units.
The OCD conducted last week a three – day contingency planning formulation workshop cum training of facilitators with 41 representatives from various local government units in the region as participants.
OCD Planning Officer Dawn Lyndelle Fernando said they are training more facilitators so that every local government unit can have the capacity to identify possible hazards in their areas that need a contingency plan for better disaster risk reduction and preparedness.
In the training workshop, participants were given an orientation on the Philippine DRRM system, cluster approach and Incident Command System as well as on the National Disaster Response Plan. They also learned how to craft contingency plan.
OCD Cordillera Regional Director Andrew Alex Uy, in an interview, stressed the importance of the capacity building activity of teaching LGUs to facilitate the formulation of contingency plans for any disaster or emergency.
“Contingency plans are very important documents as these will serve as LGUs’ ‘bible’ in case of disaster or emergency or every time that there is a need to go to the response phase of disaster risk reduction and management”, Uy said.
“We are focusing on disaster preparedness which is why we are looking to identify the gap in every local DRRM plan and preparedness so that LGUs can prepare for a contingency plan for any gap that they can identify”, he added./JDP/CCD/Rhona Hadap & Johji Yokota- PIA/UC Interns
