DAVAO CITY — No more inferior rice instead quality rice for calamity victims will be distributed starting this year, this was the assurance of Civil Defense XI Regional Director Ednar Dayanghirang on Friday.
“We will ensure that freshly milled rice of good quality not spoiled nor inferior will be delivered to the beneficiaries,” the director emphasized in an interview with Newsline.
Truth is, Dayanghirang said, on Thursday, January 4, he asked a municipal mayor to eat with him and taste the cooked sample of the rice which his agency will distribute in the later’s town.
After eating, Dayanghirang described, “He said the rice was good. So, I told him, this is the quality of rice that we will deliver to your town.”
According to the director, he has already talked to the officials of the National Food Authority that the rice which will be distributed for the victims of the calamity must always be a quality one.
In the past, recipients of relief goods especially the rice, complained the stuff are of inferior quality, smelly and with weevils crawling. The rice stocks, people believed were taken from the old stocks stored at the NFA warehouses.
However, things changed, he said, on December 2023, a memorandum was released which gave the OCD the authority to preposition relief stuff to the local governments which are vulnerable to calamities.
In the past, the OCD could not quikly respond given the circitous government bureaucracy particularly the rules imposed by the Commission on Audit (COA).
Every procurement must undergo bidding first and other documentary requirements before a disbursement is made which slowed down the relief operations.
However, on December 2023, a new order was released by the national governmetn which empowers the OCD to advance the basic goods and preposition the same to the disaster prone areas.
The new scheme enables the OCD, to move quickly and respond to any given condition but government procurement and disbursement methods are still being observed especially in the transpranceny of fund.
Davao Region has over five million population, but there are only thirty personnel in the OCD, the number is not enough to attend to various concerns especially during emergency situations.
Weaponizing the communities against calamities
Given the limitation of their human resource, Dayanghirang said , the OCD has started educating all sectors of the community especially the vulnerable one’s so that they have the necessary skills and capacity during calamities.
“We started to organize and to weaponize the Indigenous Peoples and the Muslim Communities through education and information in handling disaster situation, so they can help in their own way which is in conformity with their belief and the scientific approached of the government, we envision that every member of the society will be able to manage the situation in their own homes and communities, everyone must be an advocate,’ he added.
Apart from educating and conditioning the people on what to do when there is a calamity, Director Dayanghirang said, it would be a great help if every family knew what calamities might happen in their area.
Every community will be trained to organize their own ICS or Incident Command System for quixk responses.
Every member of the family should know what type of calamity could easily affect their community and discuss among family members the measures to undertake in a given situation.
Everyone must prepare a personal go bag which the basic necessities that would last for three days such as canned goods, food, flashlights, batteries, medicines and the important documents.
The climate change problem has become the world’s biggest problem, in Davao Regions thouands was displaced in 2023 leaving millions of damaged to agricutlure.
Dayanghirang said, there is a need for everyone to look at the problem seriously and take a proactive stance.
