A party-list lawmaker on Tuesday said updating the National Building Code deserves urgent legislative action to ensure that structures across the country are disaster-resilient.
Bagong Henerasyon Party-list Rep. Bernadette Herrera said disaster adaptation and mitigation are the only viable solutions to the country’s predicament as being disaster-prone.
Herrera said homes and communities designed to withstand typhoons, floods, landslides, tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions are what the country needs.
“Typhoon Odette is yet another reminder and clarion call to establish the Department of Disaster Resilience and update the National Building Code. Every day we delay on these necessary legislative actions means billions of property damage, lives lost, and resulting in inflation and shortages in basic commodities,” she said.
She said simply rebuilding houses and buildings that cannot survive natural calamities is not the answer to the recurring disaster woes, as the next calamity could just destroy those weak structures again.
Herrera said there is also the need to increase the minimum amounts of home repair and calamity loans to adjust for inflation and for the greater ferocity and duration of natural calamities.
She said PAG-IBIG membership must be expanded to include calamity-vulnerable families.
Aside from legislative action, Herrera said the Department of Budget and Management and the Department of Finance have to find the sources to replenish the calamity funds between now and until the 2022 national budget allocations are downloaded to the agencies and local government units.
“The national agencies must offer up a huge chunk of their unspent funds and savings, so DBM and DOF can make monies available for disaster response in the aftermath of Typhoon Odette,” she said.
Source: Philippines News Agency